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PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP 



APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AND VALIO 
ORDERS DISPROVED : 

WITH VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS OF CATHOLIC FAITH 



NUMEROUS CHARGES AGAINST THE CHURCH 

AND 

HOLY SEE, 

CORRECTED AND REFUTED. 

BY 

S. V. RYAN, BISHOP OF BUFFALO. 
IN TWO PARTS. 






BUFFALO :'x^?^^hr v--c ,-:l^\6^S^ 
CATHOLIC PUBLICATION COMPAN^ST"*'^ 
1880. 






Copyright, i88o, 

Buffalo Catholic Publication Company. 

All Rights Reserved. 



Excelsior Electrotype Foundry, 
West Seneca, N. Y. 



CLAIMS 

OF 

A PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP 

TO 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AND VALID 
ORDERS DISPROVED: 

BY 

S. V. RYAN, BISHOP OF BUFFALO. 
PART L 



CONTENTS. 

I. — Origin of our little Treatise i 

II. — Apostolical Succession essential to the Christian 
Church— It is not found either in the Anglican 
Church, as-by-law established, or the Protestant 
Episcopal Church OF America. . . .... .19 

III. — Communion with the See of Peter the Test of Legiti- 
mate Succession 26 

IV. — Protestant Episcopal and Anglican Succession Re- 
pudiated. 40 

V. — ^Was Matthew Parker Consecrated ? ... 49 

VI. — The Lambeth Register 73 

VII. — Was Barlow ever Consecrated Bishop ? . . .92 
VlII.— Futile Attempts to bolster up or supply for Bar- 
low's deficient or doubtful Consecration. . . loi 
ix. — The Edwardine Ordinal not the same as the Roman 
Pontifical — Invalidity of Forxm of Consecration re- 
vised BY Edward VI. . iii 

X. — The Insufficiency of the Edwardine Ordinal, 

Continued ' . . . . 130 

XI. — Discrepancies between the Roman Pontifical and the 

Ordinal of Edward, Continued. . . , . 146 
XII.— Conclusion 169 



PREFACE 



N the year 1874, a number of Catholic gentlemen of 
Buifalo requested me in writing, to deliver a lecture at 
my earliest convenience, in behalf of the numerous poor of 
the city, and at the same time suggested the subject of the 
lecture in these terms : " We take the liberty to suggest as- 
your subject, a review of a sermon delivered on the 31st 
ultimo, at Erie, by Dr. Coxe, on the occasion of the conse- 
cration of a missionary bishop — and published in the " Com- 
mercial Advertiser^'' of this city — a copy of which we herein 
enclose — a sermon which, it appears to us, strangely mixes 
up Catholic truth, with gross abuse of the Catholic Church;, 
sound, time-honored Catholic principles with the most un- 
warrantable assumption." Acceding to their request I wrote 
to the gentlemen: " I have read the serm^on of Dr. A. Cleve- 
land Coxe, to which you refer, and indeed I concur with 
you in characterizing it as a strange medley of truth and 
falsehood; of sound, solid arguments, eloquently and forci- 
bly put, in favor of principles which must lead any man 
holding them, who is logical and consistent, into the fold of 
the Catholic Church, and evidences of an unaccountable 
hatred, and a spirit of spitefulness towards the only Church 
that really upholds and carries out these principles. His 
sermon I will take as the text of my lecture ; the time and 
place I leave to yourselves to designate." The lecture was 
delivered in St. Joseph's Cathedral; Feb. 22, 1874, and 
afterwards printed in pamphlet form by the ' ^Buffalo Catholic 

Publication Co.,'' and the ^^ Catholic World" noticing it in the 

iii 



iv PREFA CE. 

May number of 1874, was kind enough to say: "In his 
temperate but severe criticism, Bishop Ryan has made an 
end of his (Dr. Coxe's) claims to possess episcopal character 
and mission, and has refuted him out of his own mouth. 
We trust that this able and valuable pamphlet will not be 
permitted to go into oblivion, as pamphlets are wont to 
do, but be carefully preserved and made use of by clergymen 
and others, which have to deal with Episcopalians search- 
ing after the true Church, of whom there are so many in 
these days." Some time afterwards there was published 
here in Buffalo a small brochure entitled: " Catholics and 
Roman Catholics^ by an Old Catholic, being a review of the 
lecture lately delivered in Buffalo by Rt. Rev. Dr. Ryan, 
€tc., etc., etc.," in the '' Advertisement" of which we read : 
" Though I here subjoin my name, as author of this review, 
two reasons have influenced me to withhold it from the 
title page. First, I desire to avoid all appearance of personal 
controversy, and second, I wish to make prominent my 
position as an Old Catholic, for my criticisms are based 
on ancient Catholicity." (A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of 
Western New York.) This review of our lecture, we in 
turn reviewed in a consecutive series of articles, contributed 
to ^^ The Catholic Union^'' respecting the wished-for incogfiito 
of the Rt. Rev. Divine, addressing ourselves to " Old 
Catholic," and confining ourselves, as much as possible, to 
the chief point of the controversy, his claims to Apostolical 
succession. A promise made at that time to friends, who 
urged the matter on us, and to whose judgment and wishes we 
thought we should defer, having a little leisure on our hands, 
during the past winter,- we determined to fulfil by giving to the 
public, in a revised and somewhat altered form, the sub- 
stance of those articles. Oar reviewer charged us with 
making a personal and unwarranted assault on him, and 
now we beg to say, that we spoke and wrote purely in the 
interest of truth, and in this publication we have endeavored 



PRE FA CE. V 

to discard all personal allusions, changing words and 
phrases so as, whenever possible, to avoid giving cause of 
complaint on this score, and if our language is sometimes 
strong, or if it has at times the appearance of want of courtesy, 
I think all unbiassed readers will acknowledge that the 
fault is not on our side. We love truth and must defend 
it. We know the doctrines of the Church, and must repel 
false and erroneous charges, we must resent having our- 
selves and our holy faith belied and travestied, apparently 
for the purpose of creating and confirming prejudice 
against the Catholic Church, and keeping honest and 
religious minds in ignorance and error regarding her. We 
really care little personally, as far as we ourselves are con- 
cerned, to be called an ignoramus, to whom the elements of 
history must be taught, but when we are told, or rather 
when our respected non-Catholic fellow-citizens are told, 
that we are authorized by our Church to resort to the 
tactics of lying, and even to violate the sanctity of an oath, 
whenever the good of the Church conflicts with keeping it, 
we confess to a feeling of resentment. We smile com- 
placently, when it is intimated that our " ignorance is of that 
kind, which the Old Catholics of Germany assure us is 
common among otherwise accomplished men, who have re- 
ceived their education in Roman Catholic seminaries," 
but when our own saints and doctors are misquoted, when 
canons of early councils are falsified and distorted, when the 
early Fathers of the Church are cited to affirm the very re- 
verse of their teachings, and all to obscure the truth and 
injure the true Church, can any one wonder that we feel 
occasionally a little indignant ? 

We have no personal quarrel with our neighbor and we 
have never mentioned him or his communion, in lecture or 
the press, except to refute some false charge made against 
ourselves or our Church, or repel some slanderous aspersion 
on what is dearer to us than life itself, our holy faith. He 



vi PREFA CE. 

does us great wrong then, when he tells the public that 
'' many Roman Catholics seemed to be restrained by no 
laws of courtesy," and that this "comes of the oath which 
is exacted of Roman Catholic prelates at their consecra- 
tion." This oath, and especially, the term persequar^ has 
been so often fully vindicated and explained, that I will 
only say that in translating it as found in the Roman Ponti- 
fical, / will persecute^ he does violence to sound philological 
interpretation, just as he violates consistency, when a little 
further on, in a passage which he approvingly cites from 
St. Vincent of Lerins, he translates the very same words in a 
quite different way, " It is necessary," says St. Vincent, 
quoted by Old Catholic, " for all Catholics who study to 
prove themselves legitimate sons of Mother Church to stick 
fast to the holy faith of the holy fathers and to abide in it; 
but to detest, abhor, pursue and banish all profane novelties 
of the profane." Ut profanos vero profanorum novitates 
detestentur^ horrescant, insectentur^ persequantur. (xxxiii. 
commonitor, II.) Yet, although what he rightly regards in 
St. Vincent, as righteous zeal for the holy faith of the 
fathers in pursuing and banishing profane novelties and 
errors against faith, he characterizes in us as an intolerant 
vow^ and gives a rendering of the good old Latin verb to 
suit the sentiments he chooses to impute in either case, 
still we assure him that we do not wish to be discourteous to 
any one, much less to persecute or assault brethren and 
fellow-citizens, differing from us in religious faith. Though 
in all candor, we must confess that we have seen from him 
precious little of that "loving spirit of our own Church," 
of which he speaks, but have known him, in the language of 
the writer in the " Catholic World,'' above referred to, as *' A 
prelate, conspicuous for arrogance and reckless assertion, 
and for his vituperative and defamatory assaults on the 
Catholic Church," and though we have perhaps, in self-de- 
fence, been sometimes forced to call attention to those unlov- 



PREFACE. ^11 

able features in the character of our Old Catholic reviewer,, 
and point to evidence of grossly false statements regarding the 
Church and her teaching, it was always with reluctance 
that we used language that might appear to savor of personal- 
ity, for in truth before God, we have no personal feeling 
against the gentleman. If then we now publish these articles 
in a more substantial form, it is because many whose judg- 
ment we respect have insisted on our doing so, afifirming 
that they are calculated to do much good, especially with 
those who have some idea of Church authority, Church 
government, " a divine commission coming down from the 
Apostles," a divinely appointed ministry, with powers to 
perpetuate itself and thus bring down through the ages a 
succession of faithful witnesses to the Christian revela- 
tion, incorruptible guardians of the precious deposit of 
faith once committed to the saints. No one sincerely be- 
lieving in a Church thus organized and thus to be perpet- 
uated can, we think, read the following pages without being 
convinced, how utterly absurd it is to look for such a min- 
istry, such a succession in the Anglican establishment, and 
if not there, then as the venerable Dr. Ives remarked, most 
assuredly not in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the 
United States. 

I need hardly tell my readers, that in this work they will 
find very little of my own. I have even made it a point 
whenever possible to rest my statem.ents and conclusions on 
the authority of others, and have not hesitated to quote 
freely and verbatim from Catholic authors. In this perhaps, 
I may have done some service to the Catholic student, by 
making accessible to him authorities which unfortunately 
in some cases, are either out of print or very rare. I need 
not name here again the authors from which I have so unstint- 
ingly borrowed, as I mention them all in the course of the 
work. I fear that certain repetitions of subjects and argu- 
ments may savor somewhat of serial contributions where it 



ylll PRE FA CE. 

is necessary to show in each article the general scope of 

the argument, and its bearing on the whole, yet if this does 
BOt detract from the force and conclusiveness of my argu- 
ments, I make little account of a defect of this kind in a 
work, which in a literary or artistic point of view, has, I fear, 
many more serious short-comings. The first part is entirely 
independent of the second, and constitutes a whole with- 
out it, and I was only induced to write the second part, when 
I found our reviewer by so many false references and mis- 
statements of Catholic doctrine mystifying, misleading and 
prejudicing his readers against the Catholic Church and her 
claims as the true spouse and mystical body of Christ, 
coming down from the Apostles, absolutely one in faith, 
divine in her origin, imperishable in her structure, infallible 
in her teaching, identically the self-same in her sacraments, 
in her orders, in her government, '' yesterday, to-day and 
the same forever." Yet, I think the dogmatic and historical 
points treated in the second part will be found interesting 
and instructive, and here, too, the only credit I take to my- 
self is that of bringing under our view, matters sometimes 
of profound interest and serious controversy, scattered 
over the wide range of Church history. Just here, I am re- 
minded of one other point on which I have not touched, 
and which is made much of in the advej'-tisement to Old 
Catholic's brochure, and often elsewhere. 

I beg then my reader's forbearance, while I quote again . 
"'Learned in what is Roman, they (accomplished men, who 
have received their education in Roman Catholic semin- 
aries), are left mere children in all that is Catholic. Of the 
ancient Catholic constitutions they know nothing, because 
tiiey are not even permitted to learn that such constitutions 
exist. The brilliant von Schulte, who was so long the 
fiYorite canonist of the Pope himself, has inflicted a deep 
■ '/.r-id upon the Papacy, by joining the 'Old Catholics;' 
?.r-d he is reported to have said that he was honestly en- 



PRE FA CE. ix 

slaved to the Vatican, till he woke up to the fact that the 
whole system he had been supporting is based upon the 
forged decretals and other spurious documents, which he 
had always been taught to accept as genuine. This dis- 
covery and the exposure of these facts, by Dollinger and 
his associates has lighted a spirit of Reformation in Germany, 
which is extending to other countries of Europe, and will 
not long be kept down m America.'* I have given this pas- 
sage at so great length to show the pabulum on which "Old 
Catholic" babes are fed, and I need hardly attempt to 
analyze it. I feel confident, that if our episcopal prelate 
wrote to-day. he would not assume the title and role of an 
'' Old Catholic," or base so many bright hopes on a move- 
ment that has, in the short space of a few years, proved a 
most miserable failure, second only perhaps to the later 
disgraceful collapse of the so-called "Independent Ameri- 
can Catholic Church." Started under brightest auspices, a 
powerful German Empire to back it, an imperious imperial 
chancellor its foster father, the prestige of whose name, 
Bismarck, imparted to it, even at its birth, prominence, and 
eclat^ what has it ever been ? what has it ever done ^ what 
is it now? not a single bishop would teach the polluted 
thing begotten in sacrilege, disobedience and despotism, a 
few priests mostly of disreputable antecedents and a hand- 
ful of worldly, self-styled liberal laymen, from the begin- 
ning it languished; its life is now well-nigh extinct. Never 
since the beginning of the Church's history, even in the 
early days of the Nicene, Ephesian or Constantinopolitan 
councils, were there such unanimity in the episcopate, such 
loyalty in the clergy, such firmness, independence and 
genuine Catholic spirit in the laity, and this the '' Old 
Catholic" movement has made evident and emphasized. 
What a fearful wound then, the brilliant von Schulte has 
inflicted on the Papacy by joining the "Old Catholics!" 
But who has told our enthusiastic convert to "Old Catho- 



X PREFACE. 

licism" that he was so long the favorite canonist of the 
Pope himself? If von Schulte ever said, "what he is re- 
ported to have said," m the above passage, we certainly pity 
him. Enslaved to the Vatican until he woke up to the fact 
that the whole system of the Papacy was based on forged 
decretals and other spurious documents ' What are these 
other spurious documents ? The forged decretals we know, 
every school-boy knows, or may know just what they are, 
their character and value. Our ecclesiastical students find 
all about their history, their origin, and their author in the 
text books put into their hands, and the unprofessional lay- 
man may obtain full and accurate information concerning 
this Isidorian collection of canons and decretals in ''''Apple- 
ton s American Cyclopedia^"' under the titles ; "Canon Law" 
and "Decretals." To suppose then that the brilliant von 
Schulte was imposed on by the spurious Isidore Mercator 
or Peccator and thus enslaved to the Vatican, is simply 
ridiculous. Time was, when simple minds could easily be 
deceived by unauthentic or spurious documents, provided 
the doctrine taught and the laws promulgated were not 
strange or novel, provided no innovation was broached that 
conflicted with the well-known faith and traditions of the 
Church. People did not care, or were not able to closely 
scrutinize the foundations or authorities on which they were 
made to rest. But in our day, in this nineteenth century, 
there is no excuse for the brilliant von Schulte or any other 
churchman, who allows himself to be duped by a literary 
adventurer of the ninth century.. 

We can now go back of the decretals, search the original 
documents, and it is precisely the doing of this which has 
brought men of research and patristic learning, to believe 
in the Papacy and all the authoritative teaching of the 
holy Catholic Church. To say nothing of Newman and 
Manning and a host of other really learned and conscien- 
tious Anglicans, Dr. Ives in our own country, an eminently 



PREFACE, xi 

able and amiable prelate of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, goes back in his research to the very foundation of 
the Papacy, and quotes from genuine original documents the 
testimony of the earliest Fathers in support of the same. 
Dr. James Kent Stone does the same in his " Invitation 
Heeded," and I will conclude this point, by quoting his pun- 
gent remarks regarding these forgeries : 
j£" Another indication of the real antiquity of the Papal 
claim to supremacy is the frantic assertion, that the Papacy 
has attempted to antedate its assumptions by the use of 
forgeries. I can hardly help treating contemptuously this 
unscholarly talk about the pseudo-decretals, being weak 
enough to take satisfaction that I so far suspected its trivial 
character, as never to indulge in it myself. Let it suffice 
then to remark: i. That the Isidorian collection of canons 
was certainly not made at Rome, wherever else it may have 
had its origin ; and that it was not compiled in the interest 
of the Popes, but as Guizot says, 'to serve the bishops 
against the metropolitans and temporal sovereigns.' 2. 
That the materials used in its composition were not new, 
but old, being mostly taken from early Papal rescripts, and 
synodal decrees and the writings of the Fathers. In an 
uncritical age the counterfeits escaped detection and came 
into gradual use, as being in accordance with a long es- 
tablished and recognized system. In a word, the imposture 
grew out of the supremacy, not the supremacy out of the 
imposture. 3. That the pious fraud was exposed and repro- 
bated centuries ago. All the world knows, or ought to 
know, that a Catholic would no more think of grounding 
the Papal supremacy on the compilation of Mercator, than 
would a Scotchman of vindicating his national literature 
by appealing to the Ossianic poems, or the good merchants 
of Bristol, of proving the ancient respectability of their 
city from the contents of ' Canyng's coffre.' The forged 
decretals mav be matter for curious and learned investi- 



xii PREFA CE. 

gation, but they are certainly ruled out of the debate be- 
tween Catholics and Protestants, as has been often shown. 
If Protestants expect ever to capture the citadel of the 
Papacy, it is time for them to stop playing Chinese antics 
before an old mound, which was never used for military 
purposes, and which nobody dreams of defending." It is 
then, assuredly, not very creditable to a brilliant man to be 
so easily duped, and so long and shamefully enslaved 
to the Vatican. But what, may we ask, are those ancient 
Catholic constitutions of whose very existence we are not 
permitted to have any knowledge ? Will not some kind 
friend, or zealous "Old Catholic" enlighten us, and tell us 
where we can get a glimpse at them ? We promise to in- 
troduce the study of them into our excellent and flourishing 
seminary at Suspension Bridge, and it shall no longer be 
said that this kind of ignorance is conwio7i among those edii- 
catedat Roman Catholic seminaries. But pleasantry aside, we 
firmly believe that what is not known and taught about the 
Church of Christ and her constitutions in our Catholic sem- 
inaries is not worth knowing, and after the divine constitution 
of "the Church embodied in the revealed Word of God, the 
Church of Christ has no constitutions, ancient or modern, 
but such as have been framed and indited by Popes in re- 
scripts, bulls, decretals, etc., or found in canonical enact- 
ments and ecclesiastical laws formulated by the bishops of 
the Church in diocesan synods, provincial, national, plenary 
or oecumenical councils, confirmed and approved by the 
supreme authority of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Popes of 
Rome, Peter and his successors in the Holy See. 

4* Stephen Vincent Ryan, 

Bishop of Buffalo. 

Buffalo y Feast of the Help of Christians y May 2^th, A. D, 
1880. 



C LAI MS 

OF 

A PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP 

TO 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AND VALID 
ORDERS DISPROVED. 



I. 

ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 

IN the early part of the year 1874, at the request of 
anumber of Catholic gentlemen of Buffalo, I deliv- 
ered a lecture in our Cathedral in reply to a sermon 
preached by Dr. Coxe, at Erie, Pa., on occasion of the 
consecration of John Franklin Spaulding, D. D., and 
published in full in one of our city papers. The 
leading points of the '' Sermon" and '^ Reply," may be 
gathered from the following extracts: 

"If a corporation of men still exists on the earth, 
bearing that identical commission given by Christ to 
his Apostles after his resurrection, by historical trans- 
mission, their existence as such a corporation of wit- 
nesses is irrefragable proof of the fact that Christ rose. 
Now, nobody can deny that from the time of Pontius 



2 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 

Pilate until now a continuous line of men has been 
found in divers parts of the world, perpetuated by the 
laying on of hands of those who were before them." — 
{TJie Corporate Witness, A Sermon by A. Cleveland 
Coxe, preached Dec. 3IJ/, 1873, in St. Paul's Churchy 
Erie, Pa.) 

This is perfectly true ; this is orthodox Catholic doc- 
trine. It is plain from sacred Scripture, and known 
to every Catholic child instructed in the rudiments of 
Christian Doctrine that the risen Saviour organized 
a ministry, instituted a commission that was to be 
perpetuated to the end of time ; but that Dr. Coxe, or 
the ministers and bishops of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of the United States bear that identical Apos- 
tolical commission by historical transmission, the 
learned divine does not prove, or even attempt to 
prove ; and whilst nobody can deny that from the 
time of Pontius Pilate until now a continuous line of 
men has been found perpetuated by the laying on of 
hands and the empowering of the Holy Ghost ; that 
the line comes down continuous and unbroken from 
the Apostles to the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of 
Western New York, we, with the immense mass of 
Christians, beg most respectfully to question — nay, em- 
phatically to deny. Apostolical succession, we aver, 
is one of the leading doctrines of the Christian Church ; 
but we hold it to be a gratuitous assumption that the 
Protestant Episcopal communion is that Church, or can 
prove her identity with that Church by uninterrupted 
succession from the Apostles. It will not do to say : 
*/ We are profoundly convinced of the reality of our 
Apostolic commission," for^^ can, with equal positive- 
ness and depth of conviction aver, you have not the 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 3 

slightest claim to it ; you cannot prove your title. If 
you cannot prove it satisfactorily, incontrovertibly and 
beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt, is it not tri- 
fling with men, is it not a mocking of God, this pre-* 
tended empowering under the '' same charter and same 
promises" as ''the original Apostles?" And until we 
have this clear and incontestible and convincing proof, 
may we not rally the Protestant Episcopalian as he 
did his Methodist Episcopal brother, when John Wesley 
attempted to consecrate Coke a bishop : 

" Our John on Coke his hands has laid, 
But who laid hands on him?" 

{Bishop Ryans Reply ^ delivered i7i St, Joseplis Cathe- 
dral, Buffalo, Feb. 22, iSj/f.) 

"The Apostolic ministry is sent forth geographically 
around the circumference of the globe, chronologically 
to the end of time. So far, and so long, 'ye shall be 
witnesses,' but who shall be witnesses? Ye, Apostles. 
Is there anything in Scripture more clear, then, than 
the perpetuity of the Apostolic office? Those whom 
our Lord thus addressed personally were not to bear 
their personal witness here in our part of the earth, 
yet, said the Master, *ye shall be witnesses unto me, 
unto the uttermost part of the earth.' Again, they 
were not to survive the ordinary limit of human life, 
yet, he says, 'Lo! I am with you always, even to the 
end of the world.' Could any language be more ex- 
plicit? We assert that the Apostolic order and office 
still exist. No ingenuity can make void this evidence 
that our Lord designed to perpetuate its corporate 
identity until his coming again." — {The Corporate 
Witness^ 

Here we again tread Catholic ground. With this 



4 ORIGIN OF OUR UTTLE TREATISE. 

doctrine, this line of argument, and even this language, 
barring perhaps some peculiarity of style and phrase- 
ology, you, my Catholic-friends, are familiar. You have 
often heard it before from this pulpit. Neither the 
doctrine nor the argument is new, and I quote it at 
such length only to exhibit the strange, and, to me, in- 
explicable phenomenon, so often displayed, especially 
among our estimable and cultivated Episcopal brethren, 
of a man holding principles and professing doctrines 
that must, if logically followed up, inevitably land him 
in the Catholic Church ; yet, turning his back upon her, 
closing his eyes to the light of reason, his intellect to 
the plainest truths of revelation, the most evident 
declarations of sacred Scripture. 

Of course, the Apostolic order and office still exist; 
of course, our Lord designed to perpetuate its cor- 
porate identity till his coming again. His divine word 
is pledged for it ; his veracity is at stake ; his Godhead 
and divine mission guarantee it-: As the Father sent 
me, I also send you;" ''Go teach all nations; I am 
with you all days till the end of time." But neither 
Christ our Lord nor his revealed word declare that the 
Apostlic order and office exist in the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church, or are transmitted by the mutilated, and 
oft modified form of consecration used in the Anglican 
or Protestant Episcopal ordination service. Nowhere 
in Scripture are we told that this corporate identity 
was designed to be perpetuated or reproduced in a 
communion that had no existence until some fifteen 
hundred years after the Apostolic age. Here again is 
a grave assumption, which we cannot take on credit; 
we demand proof; we find bare assertion; grand but 
unproven claims. But hold ! yes, here is an attempt 



ORJGIX OF OUK L/TTLE TREATISE. 



5 



at proving legitimate descent from the Apostles, by 
way of illustration, in answer to the objection that 
*''the original Apostles were extraordinary in their gifts 
and functions and hence in the nature of things could 
have no successors." The preacher very justly argues: 
" The first President of this Republic had extraordi- 
nary functions and relations in his high of^ce ; it was 
his to plant, to lay foundations, to be the father of his 
country. In all these things he can have no successor. 
Such were his extraordinary and personal distinctions. 
Do we argue, therefore, that the American Presidents 
are not the successors of Washington?" The illustra- 
tion is excellent, the argument unanswerable in the 
mouth of a CatJwlic bishop, who holds his commission 
immediately from a Pontiff who traces his succession 
in unbroken line to the Apostles — a Catholic bishop 
deriving his orders and his mission, his authority, right 
to rule and govern the Church over which the Holy 
Ghost hath placed hina a bishop, by the personal and 
direct authorization of the legitimate successor of him 
to whom Christ committed the care of his whole flock, 
and who can furnish the clearest historical evidence of 
his legitimate descent. Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses 
S. Grant can claim to be successors of Washington. 
Could Jefferson Davis do the same ? who rebelled against 
the old legitimate government and set up an establish- 
ment of his own. He declared that the powers at 
Washington had violated the constitution and broken 
the compact between the States, just the plea made by 
the reformers to justify their revolt against the author- 
ity of the See of Rome. ' 

The argument, then, that is conclusive in the Catho- 
lic Church, from the fact that every Catholic layman 



6 ORIGIN OF UR LITTLE TREA TISE. 

knows that the pastor who ministers to him and teaches 
him has his orders and authority by the laying on of 
hands and the grace of ordination from a superior 
pastor or bishop of a diocese, who, in turn, is directly 
authorized and commissioned by the Pope, or the 
supreme pastor, the supreme head of Christ's Church 
on earth, who again comes down from Peter by one 
continuous^ unbroken chain, of which we can count 
every link from Pius to Peter, is absolutely without 
force in a Church which has thrown off the authority 
of Rome, and cannot trace its lineage to the Apostles. 
This succession of chief pastors is the main, if not the 
only guarantee, as well of our Apostolical commission 
as of the Apostolicity of your faith and doctrine. It 
is to the chair of Peter and the regular succession of 
incumbents in that time-honored and divinely-guarded 
See, that the early fathers and saints and doctors, in 
every age, appealed, against unauthorized teachers and 
the innovations of heretics, and rebellious schismatics. 
Thus St. Augustine confounds the Donatists : "Come 
to us, brethren (he writes), if you wish to be engrafted 
in the vine. We are afHicted at seeing you cut off 
from its trunk. Count over the bishops in the very 
See of Peter, and behold in that list of fathers how one 
succeeded to the other. This is the rock against which 
the proud 'gates of hell do not prevail.'" Again he 
says: ''I am kept in this Church by the succession of 
prelates from St. Peter, to whom the Lord committed 
the care of his sheep, down to the present bishop." 
(This was, remember, in the 5th century.) And St. 
Optatus, against the same heretics, enumerates all the 
Popes from St. Peter to the then reigning Pontiff, 
Siricius ; " with whom we and all the world," he says, 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 7 

"are united in communion. Do you, now, Donatists, 
give the history of your episcopal ministry." Tertul- 
lian, before, did the same, and challenged the heretics 
of his time to produce the origin of their Church, to dis- 
play the succession of their bishops_, so that the first 
of them may appear to have been ordained by an 
Apostolic man who persevered in their communion ; 
and giving a list of the Pontiffs in the Roman see he 
says: " Let the heretics feign anything like this." St. 
Irenseus, illustrious bishop of Lyons, disciple of St. 
Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John the 
Apostle, names all the Popes to St. Eleutherius, then 
living, and says, " it would be tedious to enumerate the 
succession of bishops in the different churches; we 
refer you to that greatest, most ancient and universally 
known Church founded at Rome by St. Peter and St. 
Paul, and which has been preserved there through the 
succession of its bishops down to the present time." 
St. Jerome knew no other sure way of settling the 
disputed rights of bishops, and writes to Pope Damasus 
in regard to the heated controversy between St. Mele- 
tius and Paulinus, rival claimants of the see of Antioch : 

''I am joined in communion with your Holiness; 
that is, with the chair of Peter ; upon that rock I know 
the Church is built. I do not know Vitalis; I do not 
communicate with Miletius; Paulinus is a stranger ta 
me. Whoever is united to the chair of Peter, he is 
mine." 

So, also, St. Athanasius, whose illustrious name is 
dishonored by being coupled with the "■ Reformers," 
appeals to the Pope against the heretical intruders into 
his see of Alexandria, and the violence to which he 
was subjected by the imperial power, and is protected 



8 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 

in his episcopal character, and his episcopal rights 
vindicated by Pope Julius I., who wrote thus in the 
year 342 to the Eastern bishops, who sustained by the 
power of the State, had driven Athanasius from his see : 

" Know you not that the canonical rule was to recur 
first to our authority, and that the decisions must pro- 
ceed from it? Such is the tradition that we have re- 
ceived from the blessed Apostle Peter, and I believe 
it to be so universally acknowledged, that I should not 
recall it here if these deplorable circumstances did not 
constrain me to proclaim it." 

I dwell so long on this point, although a little beside 
my purpose, because it shows us a Pope in 342 very 
similar to our own Pope in 1874, as to this claim and 
exercise of jurisdiction over the whole Church East 
and West, and it shows us the great Athanasius ap- 
pealing to the Pope against the Emperor's violence and 
his servile, heretical, courtly bishops to be anywhere 
but in the same boat with the martyred '' reformers," 
who denied the authority of the Pope, acknowledged 
the spiritual supremacy of the king, and were by his 
authority intruded into the sees of lawful prelates. 

'' Christ said we should have such witnesses that they 
should bear their testimony till the consummation of 
ages. We believe his promises, w^e accept them in their 
plain meaning. And as they are able to demonstrate 
that their commission is identical with that which was 
left upon the Mount of Olives, your bishops claim, 
however unworthy, to be the successors of the Apos- 
tles." — [T/ie Corporate Witness^ 

Now here again we demur, and deny i7i toto the wdiole 
claim of the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of America and the bishops of their mother 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. g 

Church of England to Apostolical succession, or that 
the Apostolical commission has been preserved and 
transmitted in their communion, or sect, or church, as 
you may be pleased to call it, for the reasons which I 
will now give, as briefly and summarily as possible. 

If the bishops of the American Protestant Episcopal 
Church have this apostolical succession, or this com- 
mission identical with that which Christ our Lord gave 
his Apostles, they derive it from the established Church 
of England, which they recognize as the mother 
Church ; but if the Anglican bishops have no title to 
this claim, they cannot give it to others. There is 
an old axiom, Nemo dat quod non Jiabct. Now, the 
Anglican Church has no part in the Apostolical com- 
mission, unless it can trace its orders and its mission 
regularly from the Apostles through the Catholic 
bishops. But this it can hardly consistently attem.pt 
to do, as it declared in one of its Homilies the Catholic 
Church to have been '' drowned in abominable idolatry, 
most detested of God and damnable to man, for the 
space of eight hundred years," and in one of the 
thirty-nine articles ''that all the Apostolical sees erred 
in matters of faith." Could Matthew Parker, the first 
Anglican bishop, whilst denying the authority of the 
Pope, and in open revolt against the Apostolical See, 
claim to hold his authority and his commission from 
the Church whose corruptions he denounced, and not 
one of whose bishops would impose hands on him ? In 
the early Church, bishops appealed for their legitimacy, 
for their rights and power, for their Apostolical suc- 
cession, to the Roman Pontiff; his see was styled 
eminently and emphatically the Apostolical See; he was 
the trunk to which all the branches should be united. 



10 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 

But the Church of England revolted against his au- 
thority, severed itself from his communion, renounced 
it on account of its "idolatry," and was denounced by 
it, in turn, as heretical. 

It is a universally admitted principle of Church 
government, recognized here in our own country by the 
practice of every Church, and by decisions of the courts 
of justice, that a clergyman from whom authority is 
withdrawn according to the rules and laws of the 
Church to which he may have been attached, who is no 
longer recognized as a minister by his proper ecclesi- 
astical superior, can no longer claim to act for that 
Church ; his ministrations are not regarded, his minis- 
terial functions are no longer lawful. (I wonder if 
Bishop Cheney is recognized as a legitimate bishop and 
successor of the Apostles by Bishop Coxe? We know 
not what action the Episcopal body may have taken 
in this matter, but we do know that he cannot be so 
recognized, unless at the cost of consistency, authority 
aiad unity.) 

We also know from the history of the Christian 
Church in all ages, that when a bishop or a priest, or 
bishops and priests, revolted against the Church in 
which they were ordained and commissioned, they were 
by the very fact deprived of all authority to act in the 
name and by the authority of the Church ; they were 
silenced or suspended, deprived of their faculties and 
deposed from their sees. This was the case with the 
early heretics, the Donatists, Eutychians, the Arians, 
and others, who had validly ordained bishops; but 
surely no orthodox Anglican or Episcopalian will aver 
that these heretical bishops were successors of the 
Apostles, Something more than valid ordination or 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. jj 

the laying on of hands is necessary to perpetuate the 
Apostolical commission. On these principles, held and 
acted on by all religious denominations in the govern- 
ment of their respective societies, we maintain that 
Matthew Parker, first Anglican bishop, even if validly 
ordained by the laying on of hands, with due form of 
prayers and solemnities, and a lawful ordainer, could 
not transmit jurisdiction, or a share of Apostolical 
commission, or right to minister in the Church, because 
he himself did not possess it. 

But we absolutely deny the validity of his consecra- 
tion, and thus strike at the very root of all pretensions 
in the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Church of 
America to Apostolical succession. We can only sum- 
marily state the grounds of our positive unconditional 
denial. It is very doubtful, and can never be proved 
that he was ever consecrated at all, or that there was 
anything more than the farce of the " Nag's Head." 
The Lambeth Register is probably a forgery. Even if 
it be genuine, and the consecration took place as as- 
serted, at the hands of Barlow, an apostate monk, it is 
very doubtful that Barlow himself was ever consecrated, 
or ever anything more than a bishop elect. Even if 
Barlow was a regularly consecrated bishop, and went 
through the form of consecrating Parker, the form used, 
namely, that devised, as the act has it, by Edward, was 
notoriously insufificient and invalid, so that acts of Par- 
liament were deemed necessary to supply defects, in 
this wise: 

— " And all persons that have been or shall be made, 
ordered or consecrated archbishops, bishops, priests, 
ministers of God's Word and sacraments, or deacons, 
after the form and order prescribed, be in very deed, 



12 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 

and also by authority hereof, declared and enacted to 
be, and shall be archbishops, bishops, priests, ministers, 
and deacons, and rightly made, ordered, and conse- 
crated." 

Thus there is some ground for styling them '' Parlia- 
ment bishops," as they were commonly styled; and at 
least it is evident that there was doubt as to the validity 
of the form devised by Edward, to which this statute 
of Elizabeth (1566) refers. In Harding's controversy 
with the Anglican Bishop Jewel, he asks: "You bear 
yourself as the legitimate bishop of Salisbury, but how 
can you prove your vocation ? Who hath laid hands 
on you; how, and by whom were you consecrated?" 
and, in reply to the declaration of the latter, that he 
was consecrated by Parker, Harding subjoins, " How, I 
pray you, was your archbishop himself consecrated? 
Your metropolitan, who should give authority to all 
your consecrations, had himself no lawful consecration. 
There were, indeed, some lawful bishops in the king- 
dom who either were not required to impose hands on 
you, or who. being required, refused to do so." And 
again, rallying him on the statute of Parliament making 
good and valid defective forms of consecration : " If 
you will needs have your matters seem to depend of 
your Parliament, let us not be blamed, if we call it a 
Parliament religion, Parliament gospel, Parliament 
faith." 

Learned divines from the very beginning reproached 
the bishops of the establishment with invalidity of 
their orders. Sanders, regius professor of canon law 
at Oxford, in the time of Elizabeth, says : *' For being 
destitute of all lawful ordination, they were constrained 
to crave the assistance of the secular power, by au- 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 



13 



thority whereof, if anything were done amiss and not 
according to the prescript of the law, or omitted and 
left undone in the former inauguration, it might be 
pardoned them, and that after they had enjoyed the 
episcopal ofifice and chair many years without any 
episcopal consecration." Bristow, another divine of 
the same period, who died in 1582, says: '' In England 
the King, yea the Queen, may give their letters patent 
to whom they will, and they thenceforward may bear 
themselves as bishops and may begin to ordain minis- 
ters." And of Parker and others who had been 
Catholic priests, he says, "they were deemed, without 
a new ordination, to be not only priests, but bishops and 
archbishops, either by virtue of the royal letters, or by 
a certain ridiculous consecration of those who had re- 
ceived no power to consecrate, except what the Queen 
had given them." Whatever opinion we may form as 
to the question whether Parker was consecrated at 
Lambeth or not, and as to whether Barlow, his pre- 
tended consecrator, was a bishop or not (for these are 
matters of opinion to be determined by historical re- 
search), yet it is absolutely certain, that,, on account of 
the form used, Anglican, and consequently Protestant 
Episcopal, orders are vitiated and invalidated ; and 
hence, though the Church has acknowledged the 
validity of ordination in the Greek Church, and even 
the validity of the consecration of the Jansenist bishops 
of Holland, and, in fact, of all who preserved the regular 
ancient form, yet she never would recognize as bishops 
or priests, those ordained by the forms devised by 
Edward VL ; and Dr. Milner expresses the mind of 
the Catholic Church when he says, *' that the form used 
in the English Church previous to 1662 is just as proper 



14 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 



for the ceremony of confirming, or laying hands on 
children, as it is for conferring the powers of the epis- 
copacy." The Church established by law seems to 
have felt this herself, for, in that year (1662), just one 
hundred and three years too late to save Anglican 
orders, convocation changed the form, evidently with 
the aim of supplying the defect pointed out by Catho- 
lic divines. Macaulay, in his history of England, af- 
firms that, in 1661 Episcopal ordination was yi?r //^^^fr^/ 
time made an indispensable condition for Church 
preferment." Lord Macaulay is, indeed, a brilliant 
essayist, but rather an unreliable historian, and his 
statements, unless corroborated by other testimony, we 
would hardly trust ; yet we know from other sources 
that then, as now, the Church of England and its 
daughter in America might be said to hold anything 
and everything on this point of Apostolical succession, 
or the transmission of episcopal powers by the laying 
on of hands. 

Let us see the opinions of some of the early re- 
formers. Let us see how Cranmer himself, the model 
reformer, according to Dr. Coxe, viewed this matter. 
Cranmer says : " In the New Testament he that is ap- 
pointed -to be a bishop or a priest needeth no consecra- 
tion, by the Scripture, for election, or appointing there- 
to, is sufficient." Again: " Bishops and priests were no 
two things, but one office in the beginning of Christ's 
religion." Again: ''A bishop may make a priest, by 
the Scripture, and so may princes, and governors, also, 
and that by the authority of God." Burnet, in his his- 
tory of the Reformation, tells us: "Cranmer had, at this 
time, some particular opinions concerning ecclesiastical 
offices — that they were delivered from the king as other 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 



15 



civil offices were, and that ordination was not indispen- 
sably necessary, and was only a ceremony that might 
be used or laid aside, and that authority was delivered 
to churchmen only by the king's commission." In 
his address to Henry, in connection with the other 
mean, servile English bishops to whom the noble and 
venerable Fisher of Rochester was an illustrious excep- 
tion, Cranmer said : "All jurisdiction, civil and ecclesi- 
astical, flowed from the king, and that they exercised 
it only at the king's courtesy." Courayer, himself an 
apostate, the ablest defender of Anglican orders and 
Apostolical succession, says : "Cranmer and Barlow, two 
of the prelates appointed to reform the public liturgy 
and form of ordination, were notoriously erroneous in 
the matter of orders, and it is but too apparent that 
the chief aim of these divines and prelates was to ex- 
tinguish episcopacy." The same author says of Barlow : 
— "Among many errors which he was accused of spread- 
ing, he was charged with having maintained this prop- 
osition — * that if the King's Grace, being the supreme 
head of the Church, did choose, denominate and elect 
any layman to be a bishop, he so chosen should be as 
good a bishop as he is, or the best in England.' " I will 
conclude this point with the forcible words of Dr. 
Milner: f 

" The acknowledgment of a royal ecclesiastical su- 
premacy * in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things and 
causes,' (oath of supremacy as when the question is 
who shall preach, baptize, etc., and who shall not, what 
is sound doctrine, and what is not) is decidedly a re- 
nunciation of Christ's commission given to his Apos- 
tles, and preserved by their successors in the Catholic 
Apostolic Church. Hence it clearly appears that there 



J 6 ORIGIN OF OVR little TREATISE. 

is and can be no Apostolical succession of ministry in 
the established Church more than in the other congre- 
gations or societies of Protestants. All their preaching 
and ministering in their several degrees is performed 
by mere human authority. On the other hand, not a 
sermon is preached, nor a child baptized, nor a peni- 
tent absolved, nor a priest ordained, nor a bishop con- 
secrated throughout the whole extent of the Catholic 
Church, without the minister of such function being 
able to show his authority from Christ for what he 
does, in the commission of Christ to his Apostles — 
* All power in Heaven and earth is given to me; go 
ye, therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them, etc.,' 
Matt, xxviii. 19, and without being able to prove his 
claim to that commission of Christ by producing the 
table of his uninterrupted succession from the Apos- 
tles." 

You are then perfectly right. Dr. Coxe ; the Apostolic 
ministry was to be perpetuated by transmission of the 
commission given by Christ to his Apostles; but it is 
and can be perpetuated only in the Catholic Church, 
and by the unbroken line of pontiffs in the only 
Apostolic See that has had such an uninterrupted suc- 
cession, the See of Rome; and whosoever believes in 
the existence of such a historic transmission, must, if 
logical, acknowledge in Pius a successor of Peter, and 
in the Pope a primacy of jurisdiction, supreme author- 
ity to guide and govern the universal Church, to com- 
mission and qualify witnesses, to the uttermost parts 
of the earth — must, in one word, become a Catholic. 
We thank, however, the outspoken bishop for this 
enunciation of an essential principle of Christian faith, 
for this recognition of an essential mark of the true 



ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 



17 



Church, this strong testimony to the divine character, 
constitution and organization of the Christian ministry, 
and in all earnestness and Christian charity, we ask him 
and our many estimable Episcopalian friends in Buffalo 
to investigate for themselves this interesting subject, 
without bias or prejudice — to examine the records of 
the Christian Church, and to prove to themselves their 
claims to come down from the Apostles; to trace their' 
hierarchy to the Apostolic age, so that with undoubt- 
ing certainty and absolute conviction of their reason 
they may consistently hold their communion, their 
Church, to be identical in ministry, in orders and mis- 
sion, with the Apostolic Church. 

Does truthful history warrant such a belief? On the 
contrary, does not history show to any unbiassed 
reader, that the Church of England started with Henry 
VIII. making himself the head of the Church and 
source of all its authority and jurisdiction, modifying the 
Church discipline to meet this most- unapostolical and 
unwarrantable pretension, and thus forcibly and miser- 
ably tearing away the English Church from the parent 
stock, forcing her into rebellion, cutting off all com- 
munication with the main trunk and seat and source 
of Apostolical jurisdiction, the only see in the whole 
of Christendom through which it is any way possible 
to trace Apostolical succession ? — Bishop Ryan s Reply 
to the Corporate Witness. 

To this reply, Dr. Coxe published a rejoinder, " Catho- 
lics and Roman Catholics, by an old Catholic,'' which in 
turn was reviewed in a series of articles in the *' Catho- 
lic Union,'" published in Buffalo. The substance of 
these articles we are now induced to republish in a 
more permanent form, in the hope that the discussion 



1 8 ORIGIN OF OUR II T TIE TREATISE. 

of the question of Apostolical succession may prove 
interesting and instructive, especially to our worthy 
and esteemed Episcopalian friends, who believe with 
Dr. Coxe that, " from the time of Pontius Pilate until 
now, a continuous line of men has been found perpetu- 
ated by the laying on of hands and the empowering of 
the Holy Ghost," and who, in good faith, and with un- 
questioning docility, accept the claims of their bishops 
to be successors of the Apostles, with '' commissions 
identical with that left on the Mount of Olives." As 
this is no personal controversy, but one on which we 
enter solely in the interest of Truth, and with a view 
of promoting the salvation of souls, we shall refrain as 
much as possible from personal allusions, and as we 
purpose to confine ourselves to the question of Apos- 
tolical succession, we will allow ourselves to be carried 
away by side issues, or to the discussion of other mat- 
ters, only in as far as they may have a bearing on the 
question at issue, or may be forced on us. 



APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL. 



19 



II. 

-^APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL TO lilZCilRIS- 
TIAN CHURCH — IT IS NOT FOUND EITHER IN THE 
ANGLICAN CHURCH, AS-BY-LAW-ESTABLISHED, OR' 
THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF AMERICA. 

WE deny then in toto that ApostoHcal succession 
has been preserved or transmitted in the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church of America, or in the Anglican 
establishment. Let it, moreover, be borne in mind that 
there can be here no question as to Apostolical succes- 
sion being an essential doctrine of the Christian Church. 
It is well demonstrated from Holy Writ, that our Lord 
founded a corporate order of witnesses, who should be 
an extension of Himself, a prolonging of His personal 
mission, and nobody can deny that from the time of 
Pontius Pilate until now, a continuous line of men has 
been found in divers parts of the world, perpetuated by 
the laying on of hands of those who were before them. 
It is evident from sacred Scripture, it is known to all 
who read their Bible, that the risen Saviour organized 
a ministry, a body of teachers, and sent them to teach 
all nations, promising to be with them to the end' of 
ages, and hence their commission was to continue, they 
were to be perpetuated to the end of ages. Continu- 
ous and unbroken succession from the Apostles is, then, 



20 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL 

unquestionably, a fundamental doctrine, an essential 
note of the Christian Church. We are willing to allow 
that, " only in the perpetuated historic identity of the 
Apostolic commission can we find monumental evidence 
of the fact of the resurrection," and consequently of 
the truth of Christianity; and again: "the canon of 
Scripture itself depends on it ; you cannot prove your 
Bible authentic without it." Only those who can satis- 
factorily and certainly trace the historic identity of 
their ministry with, and their legitimate descent from, 
the i\postles, can have any certainty of the reality of 
the resurrection, of the truth of Christianity, of the 
canonicity and authenticity of the sacred Scriptures. 
But this identity and Apostolic succession, confessedly 
essential to the true Church of Christ, the Episcopal 
Church cannot show, and therefore the Episcopal 
Church cannot prove herself the true Church of Christ. 
Nay, more, only in the Catholic Church, in communion 
with the See of Rome, the Apostolical See, can this 
identity be found and clearly demonstrated, and there- 
fore all who hold this identity, this succession from the 
Apostles as a necessary characteristic, and clistmc- 
tive mark of the Christian Church, must, if logical and 
consistent, go over to Rome, towards which their faces 
are plainly set. Woe betide them if they look back. 
Unfortunately, Lot's wife is not a solitary instance of 
the terrible judgment awaiting those who close their 
eyes to the light of truth, and harden their hearts to 
the inspirations of grace, who through undue attach- 
ment to the things of earth, or over-much affection to 
family and friends, love of lucre or pride of intellect, 
through want of moral courage to bear the poverty 
and humility of the cross, stifle the voice of conscience 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 2 1 

halt in their search for truth, and turn back when on 
the very point of escaping from the Babel of confusion. 
Many such in our experience we have met, monuments 
of the justice of God, beacons of warning to those who 
close their hearts to grace, their eyes to truth, real 
pillars of salt, their lives produce only dead sea fruit; 
notwithstanding outside deceitful appearances they 
are filled with ashes and wormwood. 

As to the value to be attached to assertions like 
these: "The succession in the Church of England is 
more demonstrably canonical and regular, in all par- 
ticulars, than any other succession in Christendom," 
or " It may be shown that nobody competent to form 
an opinion, and who has taken the pains to investigate 
the matter, has ever professed a doubt concerning- 
Anglican succession;" our readers will be able to judge 
presently. Apostolical succession requires, as those 
making the above assertions admit, something more 
than valid ordination. We may admit not only the 
fact, but also the validity of a bishop's consecration, 
and yet deny him, even though validly consecrated, 
any participation in the divine commission given by 
Christ to His Apostles, any claim to Apostolical suc- 
cession. Valid ordination is essential to, but insuffi- 
cient for, legitimate succession. In the whole history 
of the Christian Church, there is nothing more evident 
than this, that when a bishop or priest, or bishops and 
priests, revolted against ecclesiastical authority, or con- 
tumaciously erred against faith, they were silenced, sus- 
pended, deprived of their faculties, deposed from their 
sees. The Church, which had commissioned them and 
given them authority, jurisdiction, a right to teach, and 
assigned them a mission in which to exercise their 



22 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTLAL 

ministry, simply revoked their commission, recalled her 
grant of powers, and annulled all license to act for her, in 
her name, or by her authority. Thus she acted towards 
the validly ordained and rightly consecrated heretical 
Donatist, Eutychian and Arian bishops ; and who 
among our orthodox Anglicans or Episcopalians will 
recognize such excommunicated, deposed and deprived 
heretical bishops as successors of the Apostles. She 
holds the same principles to-day; schismatical and 
heretical bishops such as the bishops of the Greek 
Church, the Jansenist bishops of Holland, and even 
Reinkens, the itinerant Old Catholic bishop of Germany, 
even if validly ordained, have no share in the Apos- 
tolical commission, have no jurisdiction, they are not 
sent, and how shall they preach? They are thus cut 
off from communion with the Church, broken off from 
the chain of Apostolical succession. Again, it is equally 
certain, and the history of the Church from the days 
of the Apostles bears witness, that bishops appealed 
in proof of their legitimacy, their right and authority 
to take and hold and govern their respective sees, to 
the See of Rome, the See of Peter, because from the 
very beginning of the Church the bishops of the whole 
Christian world acknowledged the primacy of the See 
of Peter, the universal jurisdiction and supreme au< 
thority of the successors of Peter, whom Christ Him- 
self commissioned to feed and govern his whole flock. 
This primacy of jurisdiction was necessary to maintain 
in' unity of faith, a Church destined to spread over and 
embrace the habitable globe, from ocean to ocean, and 
from pole to pole. This supreme authority vested in 
the Apostolic See, not by the canons, but by the Lord 
Jesus Himself in founding His Church, the bishops in 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 23 

every age admitted, and none perhaps more unequiv- 
ocally than the great Bossuet, whom " Old Catholic" 
loves to quote. " All," says the eloquent bishop of 
Meaux, " are subject to the keys of Peter, kings and 
people, prelates and priests ; we own it with joy, for 
we love unity, and glory in obedience." 

Communion with the See of Rome, recognition of 
spiritual supremacy, and primacy of jurisdiction in the 
See of Peter, was not only the test of orthodoxy, but 
the proof of legitimacy and the guaranty of Apos- 
tolic succession. Now the Anglican bishops in the 
time of Henry VIII., Edward VI. , and Elizabeth dis- 
owned all allegiance in spiritual matters to the Sovereign 
Pontiffs, revolted against Peter's authority, and re- 
nounced his spiritual supremacy, and thus was brought 
about that change in the religious system '' under 
which," says Rev. Mr. Waterworth, in his historical 
lectures on the Reformation, " our forefathers during 
more than a thousand years lived and died. It was 
Henry's lustful revenge and rapacity that removed the 
key-stone of the arch, the principle of unity, by which 
under one head appointed by Jesus Christ, there was 
formed of all the nations and kingdoms of the earth, 
one Catholic or universal kingdom, believing in one 
I^ord, one faith, one baptism, and one Church." 

The historian. Dr. Heylin, in the preface to his " His- 
tory of the Reformation," acknowledges "that Henry, 
finding the Pope the greatest obstacle to his desires, 
divested him by degrees of that supremacy, which had 
been challenged and enjoyed by his predecessors for 
some agos past, and finally extinguished his authority 
in the realm of England." The king's authority v/as 
substituted for the Pope's, the king's spiritual suprem- 



24 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL 

acy, and not the Pope's, was now invoked, and the 
king was declared to be the fountain of all jurisdiction, 
both temporal and spiritual. In the oath of supren:iacy 
exacted from all archbishops and bishops in the reign 
of Elizabeth, the prelates were obliged to swxar that 
their right and m.ission to preach and to minister were 
derived from the civil pOAver only, and before conse- 
cration the bishop elect was made to *' acknowledge 
and confess that he holds his bishopric as well in. 
spirituals as temporals from her alone, and the crown 
royal." Not from the Apostles, then, to whom it was 
said "go and teach all nations," etc., but from a vin- 
dictive, lustful king, a sickly boy, and a bad woman, 
do the Anglican bishops derive their commission and 
jurisdiction, and very correctly does Dr. Milner, whom 
no one acquainted with the man or his writings would 
call ignorant, argue that " the acknowledgment- of 
royal ecclesiastical supremacy ' in all spriritual and ec- 
clesiastical things or causes' is decidedly a renunciation 
of Christ's commission given to His Apostles, and pre- 
served by their successors in the Catholic Apostolic 
Church." Hence it clearly appears that there is, and 
can be, no Apostolical succession of ministry in the 
established Church. 

The line of Apostolical succession in the Church of 
England was then broken in the reign of Henry VHL, 
the breach widened under Edward VI., the rupture 
partially healed under Llary, was re-opened under 
Elizabeth, when the chain reaching from Augustine 
and through him from the Apostles (for he was sent 
and commissioned b}' Pope Gregory), down to Cardinal 
Pole, was ruthlessly and hopelessly severed by Parker's 
intrusion into the See of Canterbury. Parker held his 



TO THE CIIRISTIAX CliL'RCIi. o^ 

commission, and acknowledged on oath that he held 
his commission and jurisdiction, his right and authority 
to preach, teach, and administer sacraments from the 
crown, from her majesty, and her m.ajesty's pliant 
Parliament. 



26 \' COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER 



III. 



COMMUNION V/ITH THE SEE OF PETER THE TEST OF 
LEGITIMATE SUCCESSION. 

ARBITRARY and tyrannical rulers, aided by servile 
Parliaments, and an intimidated clergy, dissevered 
the Church of England from what was known through- 
out Christendom, East and West, as emphatically and 
pre-eminently tJie Apostolic See, the See of Rome, the 
only See to which it is possible to-day for the Chris- 
tian Church to appeal, to prove with certainty her 
Apostolical origin, to attest the historic transmission 
of the Apostolic commission, to vouch for the corporate 
identity of her bishops with the original witnesses. To 
this Roman See, centre and source of unity, because 
vested with supreme authority and universal jurisdlc-- 
tion, and to the unbroken succession of Sovereign 
Pontiffs, in the same, the primitive Church, the early 
fathers, saints and doctors ever appealed against un- 
authorized teachers, innovating heretics, and rebellious 
schismatics. Whosoever were not united to the chair 
of Peter, were not regarded as successors of the Apos- 
tles ; nay, by the fact of their not belonging to that 
leading succession, they were, as St. Irenaeus tells us, 
to be suspected as heretics and schismatics. A bishop, 
then, even when rightly ordained or validly consecrated, 
if he apostatize from the faith, rebel against the recog- 



THE TEST OF LEGI TIM A TE S UCCE SSI ON. 2 7 

nized authority of the Church, and be cut off from her 
communion, cannot pretend to any share in the com- 
mission which comes down by historical transmission 
from the Apostles ; hence, though Matthew Parker suc- 
ceeded Warham and Pole in the See of Canterbury, 
even allowing that he were actually and validly conse- 
crated, would no more be a successor of the Apostles 
than Jeff. Davis was a successor of Washington. This 
Dr. Kenrick thus expresses: "As well might Crom- 
well be considered one of the Stuart kings of England, 
or Napoleon Bonaparte one of the Bourbon race, as 
Matthew Parker, even if validly ordained — be regarded 
as a link added to the chain of Catholic archbishops 
of Canterbury, reaching down from St. Augustine to 
Cardinal Pole, in whom that illustrious series of Pon- 
tiffs finally ceased." 

We moreover assert that full communion with the 
See of Rom^e was the test of orthodoxy and legitimacy, 
not only in the primitive Church, but was the test of 
the orthodoxy and legitimacy of the bishops of Eng- 
land, down to the time of Henry VIII. To the testi- 
mony already adduced from Rev. Mr. Waterworth, and 
Dr. Heylin, in his " History of the Reformation," we 
will only add the following. Dodd, in his '' Church 
History of England," quotes a remarkable speech which 
some, says the historian, ascribe to Bishop Fisher, 
"Whoever the person was, he takes the liberty to 
say that the cause (the royal supremacy) was of the 
greatest consequence, that he could wish the king w^ere 
capable of that power he aimed at ; that it was an at- 
tempt directly opposite to the practice of the English 
nation, in all former ages ; that it was depriving the 
ecclesiastical body of a spiritual head, much more 



28 COMMCNIOX WirH THE SEE OE PETER 

necessary than in temporal affairs; that no spiritual 
jurisdiction \vas ever looked upon as valid, without the 
approbation of the See of Rome ; that the See of Rome 
was the centre of unity, by whose authority heresy had 
always been suppressed, and princes reconciled by 
submitting to her decisions and arbitration ; in fine, 
Rome was a kind of court of chancery to all nations 
that professed Christianity ; and those that . were 
divided from her, would be like branches cut off from 
the tree of life." 

Please to mark well the words that the '■'attempt of 
Henry was directly opposite to the practice of the English 
natio7i in all former ages ; that no spiritual jurisdiction 
was looked upon as valid without approbation of the See 
of Rome, and that those divided from Rome would be like 
brandies cut off from the tree of life!' 

This certainly does not tally with what the claimant 
of Anglican succession asserts on this subject : '^He^irys 
supremacy was based on ancieiit rigJits of the crown zvhich 
he merely re-assiuned ;'' and, ''''gradually by imlawful en- 
croachment -the Papacy zvas formed in Western Europe y 
and so, gradually, its ustcrpation extended to England.'* 
And again: "Queen Mary, the bloody, created the 
Roman hierarchy by law, while Henry VIII. never did 
anything of the kind ; but merely continued the Church 
as he found it," and "to suppose that Elizabeth estab- 
lished the Church of England in any sense other than 
that in which it was the law of the land under the 
Plantagenets and the Papacy, is a very ignorant mis- 
take," etc., etc. We must remark that in refuting these 
assertions, made with all the recklessness, effrontery, 
and disregard to historic truth, usual with certain 
parties, we do little more than condense and summarize 



THE TEST OF LEGITTMATE SUCCESSION. 29 

the facts of history touching this matter, admirably 
brought together by the learned Cardinal Wiseman, 
whom, no doubt, these gentlemen would write down an 
ignoramus, who has either never investigated the mat- 
ter, or is incompetent to form an opinion. 

Venerable Bede informs us that Pope Eleutherius sent 
over missionaries to the Britons, and converted them. 
And when the Pelagian heresy had infested the Island, 
Pope Celestine sent St. Germanus to correct and 
purify it. A Pope then, not a king, conimissioned the 
missionaries and bishops of the early British Church. 
Again, that slaves might becom'e sons, that Angli might 
be made Angeli, Pope St. Gregory sent Augustine 
from his monastery on the Caelian hill, who reconverted 
the Island under the Anglo-Saxons, and established the 
legitimate succession of the Episcopacy, which con- 
tinued until the encroachmejits and usurpations of spir- 
itual supremacy by Henry, and his worthy daughter 
Elizabeth. Is it with a design to mislead, that we are 
told . ^' When the Patriarch Gregory, Bishop of Rome," 
(though the same writer says, it was impossible for 
the Pope to assert even a patriarchal authority over 
England) sent Augustine to convert the Saxons, the 
missionary found there an existing British Church 
dating from the Apostolic times." He might as well 
have added from the Venerable Bede, to whom he re- 
fers, that it was, as we said above, a Pope of Rome 
who gave authority, mission and jurisdiction to the 
bishops of the British Church. Again we are told, 
*' Augustine was consecrated first archbishop of Can- 
terbury by Galilean bishops." » 

Dr. Newman even before his conversion says in one 
of his essays, " Disingenuousness is a characteristic of 



30 ■ COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER 

heresy." It evidently is a marked feature of some con- 
troversialists. By the Pope's authority, Augustine, a 
priest and monk, with his monk companions, goes to 
evangelize the Saxons ; by command of the same 
Pope Gregory, Augustine was consecrated a bishop 
by Virgilius, the primate of Aries, but Virgilius had no 
authority to send him to England, he could give him no 
jurisdiction over that island. Virgilius could only do 
what every validly ordained bishop can do to-day, 
confer the episcopal powers of order, but not of jurisdic- 
tion ; only the Pope could assign a mission, impart jur-- 
isdiction or authority to exercise those powers, within a 
given territory. To Virgilius himself the same Pope 
had granted X.h.Q pallm7?i, the badge of the archiepis- 
copal dignity, giving him authority over all the 
bishops of Gaul. " Because," says St. Gregory, " it is 
plain to all whence the holy faith came forth in the 
regions of Gaul ; when your P'raternity asks afresh for 
the ancient custom of the Apostolic See, what does it, 
but as a good child recur to the bosom of its mother? 
And so we grant your Fraternity to represent us, 
in the churches which are in the kingdom of our most 
excellent son Childebert, according to ancient custom, 
which has God for its author." But Gregory, not Vir- 
gilius, constituted Augustine archbishop of London, 
sending him th.Q pallium, authorizing him to consecrate 
twelve suffragans. 

The see was afterwards by the authority of the Pope 
transferred from London to Canterbury. By the di- 
rection of the Pope, the archbishop of York was to 
be subject to Augustine during his lifetime, and after- 
wards the two metropolitans were to be independent, 
and have precedence according to seniority of conse- 



THE I'EST OF LEGITIMATE SUCCESSION, 



31 



cration. Afterwards Pope Honorius I. sends the 
pallium to' tlie two archbishops with special powers to 
either, to name the other's successor, *' in virtue of the 
aiitlLority of tlie Holy See, in consideration of the great 
distance which separates England from Rome." 

Pope Adrian created the bishop of Lichfield a pri- 
mate, subjecting to him many of the suffragans of 
Canterbury. Pope Leo IIL rescinded his predecessor's 
decree, and restored to Canterbury its former suffra- 
gans. Long and heated were the contests for super- 
iority, between Canterbury and York, and to the Pope 
the rival claimants appeal, to determine the disputed 
prerogatives, and their alternate triumphs were due to 
decisions of the Pope in favor of one or the other. St. 
Bernard tells us in his life of St. Malachi, archbishop 
of Armagh, that he (St. Malachi) undertook a journey 
to Rome to obtain the pallium for himself, and for a 
new archiepiscopal see, the erection whereof he de- 
sired to have confirmed by the Holy See. From all 
this it is plain that the Holy See did from the begin- 
ning order the hierarchy of the Church of England, 
transfer, divide, and otherwise vary the jurisdiction of 
metropolitans. Among other examples occurring, after 
Augustine and his immediate successors appointed in 
virtue of authority from the Apostolic See, Venerable 
Bede informs us that Wigard- was sent to Rome by 
Egbert, king of Kent, and Oswi of Northumbria, to be 
consecrated by Pope Vitalianus, and the reason given 
by the two monarchs for wishing to have the archbishop 
consecrated at Rome was — '^Quia Romana esset Catho- 
lica et Apostolica ecclesia!' Because the Roman was the 
Catholic and Apostolic Church. Although the clergy com- 
plained and grew sometimes restive on account of papal 



32 



COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF ROME 



provisions, whereby the court of Rome filled vacant 
benefices with strangers ; until the time of Henry VIII. , 
we never read of any denial of the Pope's authority to 
confirm archbishops, or of his jurisdiction over them; 
he had ever a legate in England who took precedence 
and passed judgment in their causes, and until the time 
of Henry VIII, , the privileges and rights of the Holy 
See were never impugned or disputed, recent declara- 
tions to the contrary notwithstanding. 

The conclusion so pertinent to our argument, which 
the eminent and learned Cardinal Wiseman logically 
forces from the mouth of Anglicans fond of appeal- 
ing to ancient canons and customs and privileges 
of patriarchal sees, is — ''That the bishops now ex- 
isting in England, even supposing the validity of 
their orders, were instituted and appointed, the Bishop 
of Rome not only not consentient, but repugnant 
thereto, and vehemently condemning the same as an 
infringement of his immemorial rights, secured to him 
by canons and customs become ancient, though they 
hold authority by law, have not, and never have had, 
since the Reformation, any ecclesiastical, hierarchical 
or Apostolical succession, authority or jurisdiction what- 
ever, in matters religious or spiritual ; that they are 
not the inheritors or successors of those who held the 
sees until that time ; that, consequently, they are in 
the eyes of the Church Catholic, intruders, usurpers and 
illegitimate holders of the same." The above will be 
a sufificient answer to the extravagant assertion, that 
the supremacy of Henry was nothing novel, but based 
on the ancient rights of the crown, and that the Church 
of England was never a Roman Catholic Church. Let 
us hear what the Church of England herself has to say 



THE TEST OF LEGITIMATE SUCCESSION. 33 

on this point. In the year 1534, Parliament, under 
orders from a despotic king, declared that the Bishop 
of Rome had no jurisdiction over the Church of Eng- 
land, and that the king was rightfully her supreme 
head. In the year 1536 the Church of England, in con- 
vocation at York, declared : "■ We think the king's 
highness, nor any temporal man, may not be the head 
of the Church by the laws of God, -^ * * and we think 
by the law of the Church, general councils, interpreta- 
tions of approved doctors, and consent of Christian 
people, the Pope of Rome hath been taken for tJie head 
of the Church and Vicar of Christy and so ought to be 
taken.'\ Again, in the first year of Elizabeth's reign, 
both houses of convocation, and the two Universities, 
declared it to be the faith of the Church of England: 
•'That the supreme power of feeding and governing 
the militant Church of Christ and confirming their 
brethren is given to Peter,, the Apostle, and his lawful 
successors in the See Apostolic, as unto the vicars of 
Christ." 

Our readers may perhaps like to hear what Henry 
himself says on this subject, in his defence of the 
Sacraments against Martin Luther : " Luther cannot 
deny but that all the faithful Christian Churches, at 
this day, do acknowledge and reverence the holy See 
of Rome as their mother and primate. * * * And 
if this acknowledgment is grounded neither on divine 
nor human right, how hath it taken so great and gen- 
eral root ? how was it admitted so universally by all 
Christendom? how began it? how came it to be so 
great? yea, and the Greek Church also, though the 
empire was passed to that part, we shall find that she 
acknowledged the primacy of the same Roman Church. 



34 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER 

* * * Whereas Luther so impudently doth affirm 
that the Pope hath his primacy by no right, neither 
divine nor human, but only by force and tyranny, I do 
wonder how the mad fellow could hope to find his 
readers so simple, or blockish as to believe that the 
Bishop of Rome, being a priest, unarmed, alone, with- 
out temporal force, or right, either divine or human 
(as he supposed) should be able to get authority over 
so many bishops his equals throughout so many dif- 
ferent nations. -^ -^^ -^ Or that so many people, cities, 
kingdoms, commonwealths, provinces and nations 
would be so prodigal of their own liberty, as to sub- 
ject themselves to a foreign priest (as now so many 
ages they have done), or to give him such authority 
over themselves, if he had no right thereunto at all." 
Perhaps, too, it might be interesting to recall what-Dr. 
Lingard says in regard to this assumption by Henry 
of spiritual supremacy. *' Henry had now obtained 
the great object of his ambition. His supremacy in 
religious matters had been established by act of Par- 
liament. ^ -^ -^ Still the extent of his ecclesiastical 
pretensions remained subject to doubt and dissension. 
That he intended to exclude the authority hitherto 
exercised by the Pontiffs, was sufficiently evident. 

* * * Henry himself did not clearly explain, perhaps 
he knew not how to explain, his own sentiments. If 
on the one hand, he was willing to Dush his ecclesias- 
tical prerogative to its utmost limits, on the other he 
was checked by the contrary tendency of those princi- 
ples, which he had published and maintained in his 
treatise against Luther." But he did push this pre- 
tended prerogative of the crown to extreme limits, 
when he made Cromwell his vicar-general, allowed 



THE TEST OF LEGITIMATE SUCCESSION. 



35 



him precedence as such before all the lords spiritual 
and temporal, not only made him sit in Parliament 
before the archbishop of Canterbury, but made him 
supersede that prelate in the presidency of the convo- 
cation. The degradation of the bishops was, however, 
not yet deep enough. It was resolved to extort from 
them a practical acknowledgment that they derived 
no authority from Christ, but were merely the occa- 
sional delegates of the crown. He suspended the 
powers of all the Ordinaries of the realm, and by 
making them petition for the restoration of the same, 
made them acknowledge the crown to be the real foun- 
tain of spiritual jurisdiction. When they submitted 
with abject servility, and petitioned for the restoration 
of their suspended powers, a commission was issued to 
each bishop separately, authorizing him during the 
king's pleasure, and as the king's deputy, to ordain, 
etc. The same assumption and arbitrary exercise of 
the prerogative of the crown, and spiritual supremacy 
were continued under Edward and Elizabeth, with this 
difference, that under Henry the bishops, brow-beaten, 
intimidated and demoralized, yielded, with the excep- 
tion of the heroic bishop of Rochester, and thus in 
some sense appeared to lend the sanction of the Church 
to Henry's tyrannical usurpations, whereas under Eliza- 
beth they atoned for their pusillanimity and cowardice, 
redeemed the honor of the episcopacy, and, with the 
solitary exception of Kitchen of Llandaff, spurned 
the oath of supremacy, and without even one excep- 
tion they refused to be made the tools of the royal 
popess by conferring a fraudulent illegitimate conse- 
cration on her appointees. 

All this we have detailed so lengthily to show that 



36 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER 

in the Church of England (and the same may be shown 
of every Church in Christendom), from her earliest es- 
tablishment, and especially since the introduction of 
Christianity among the Saxons by St. Augustine, down 
through every age, even to the time of Henry and 
Elizabeth, the supremacy of the Pope in things spiritual 
was acknowledged. The Pope exercised jurisdiction 
over the island, and the bishops, archbishops and 
primates, down to Parker's illegitimate intrusion by the 
civil power, held their commissions from the Apostolic 
See, and thus were linked on to the unbroken Apostolic 
chain, the legitimate succession of their bishops thus 
coming down from the Apostles. 

Hov,- clearly and conclusively is this shown by Arch- 
bishop Heath of York, in the eloquent and forcible 
speech, which he delivered in the House of Lords, 
against the spiritual supremacy of the crown in the 
year 1559. His able speech may be found in full in 
"Dodd's Church History of England; Appendix 
35.," from which we quote the following extracts : 

'• By relinquishing and forsaking the Church or See of 
Rome, we must forsake and fly, first, from all general 
councils; secondly, from all canonical and ecclesiasti- 
cal laws of the Church of Christ ; thirdly, from the judg- 
ment of all other Christian princes ; fourthly, and lastly, 
we must forsake and fiy from the holy unity of Christ's 
Church. ^ -^ ^ First, touching the general councils, I 
shall name unto you these four: the Nicene Council, 
the Constantinopolitan Council, the Ephesine, and the 
Chalcedon. ^ ^ ^ At the Nicene Council, the first of 
the four, the bishops did write their epistle to Sylves- 
ter, then Bishop of Rome, that their decrees then made, 
might be confirmed by his authority. At the council 



THE TEST OF LEG I TIM A TE SUCCESSION. 



37 



kept at Constantinople, all the bishops there were obe- 
dient to Damasus, then Bishop of Rome. -^ * ^ At the 
Ephesine Council, Nestorius, the heretic, was con- 
demned by Celestine^ the Bishop of Rome, he being 
chief judge there. At the Chalcedon Council, all the 
bishops there assembled, did write their humble sub- 
mission unto Leo, then Bishop of Rome ; wherein they 
did acknowledge him there, to be their chief head, six 
hundred and ' thirty bishops of them. Therefore to 
deny the See Apostolic and its authority, were to con- 
temn and set at naught, the authority and decrees of 
these noble councils. ^ - * Fourthly, and lastly, we 
must (by forsaking the See of Rome) forsake and fly 
from the holy unity of Christ's Church, seeing that St. 
Cyprian, that holy martyr and great clerk, doth say that 
the unity of the Church of Christ doth depend upon 
Peter's authority, and his successor's. ^ * -^ And by 
this our forsaking and flying from the unity of the 
Church of Rome, this inconveniency, among many, 
must consequently follow : that either we must grant 
the Church of Rome to be the true Church of God, or 
else a malignant Church. If you answer that it is a 
true Church of God, where Jesus Christ is truly taught 
and his sacraments rightly administered, how can we 
disburthen ourselves of our forsaking and flying from 
that Church, which we do acknowledge to be of God? 
If you answer that the Church of Rome is not of God, 
but a malignant Church, then it will follow that we, 
the inhabitants of this realm, have not as yet received 
any benefit of Christ ; seeing we have received no 
gospel, or other doctrine, nor no other sacraments, 
but what was sent to us from the Church of Rome — 
first, in King Lucius, his days, at whose humble epistle. 



^8 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER 

the holy martyr Eleutherius, then Bishop of Rome, did 
send into this realm two holy monks, Fugatius and 
Damianus, by whose doctrine and preaching we were 
first brought to the knowledge of the faith of Jesus 
Christ, of his holy gospel and his most holy sacraments; 
then, secondly, holy St. Gregory, being Bishop of Rome, 
did send into this realm two other holy monks, St. 
Augustine, called the Apostle of England, and Meletius, 
to preach the self-same faith planted here, in this realm 
in the days of King Lucius; thirdly, and last of all, 
Paul III.,%eing Bishop of Rome, did send hither the 
Lord Cardinal Pole, his grace (by birth a nobleman of 
this land), his legate to restore us unto the same faith, 
which the martyr, St. Eleutherius, and St. Gregory, 
had planted here many years before. If, therefore, the 
Church of Rome be not of God, but a false and malig- 
nant Church, then have we been deceived all this while ; 
seeing the gospel, the doctrine, the faith and the sacra- 
ments must be of the same nature as that Church is 
from whence it and they came." 

This disposes of the ludicrous assertion, made with 
so much apparent self-complacency and assurance, that : 
" The first archbishop of Canterbury was consecrated 
at Aries, in France (597) and thus introduced the Eph- 
esine succession from St. John, through Irenaeus and 
Photinus." This assertion is moreover too childish for 
any one who pretends to know anything about primi- 
tive Christianity. Must we teach again the first ele- 
ments of Christian Doctrine, the first principles of 
Church organizatien, and government? must we repeat 
the plain distinction between orders and mission ? must 
we go about proving what has already been acknowl- 
edged, what the Episcopal Church teaches and acts 



Julius 111., he doubtless meant. 



THE TEST OF LEGITIMATE SUCCESSION. 30 

Upon, viz.: that something more than a vaHd conse- 
cration is necessary to confer jurisdiction, a share in 
the commission and apostolate instituted by Christ to 
evangelize the nations and convert the world? Aries 
could consecrate, only Rome could send Augustine 
with Apostolic authority to England, to preach the 
faith and transmit Apostolic succession to the English 
hierarchy. 



40 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN 



IV. 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN SUCCESSION 

REPUDIATED. 

WE cannot, perhaps, offer anything on the subject 
of the pretended legitimacy, jurisdiction, and con- 
sequently Apostolic succession of the Protestant Episco- 
pal prelates of the United States, more conclusive and 
clear than the earnest words of the lamented and estim- 
able Dr. Ives, late bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in North Carolina: " The real character of the 
Episcopal authority and mission of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in America must depend upon the 
character of the source from which they are derived. 

'' So that any defect which the Mother Church of 
England may have inherited from the system of Eliza- 
beth, seemed to me clearly entailed upon the daughter 
in the United States. 

" Now then, I entreat my old friends to allow me to 
call to their minds that view of the mission and juris- 
diction of the English Church, as established by Eliza- 
beth, which destroyed my confidence in her claim to 
my submission. I asked myself — not as a Catholic, 
not as a controversialist — but as one deeply anxious to 
know the will of God, and to know, if possible, that 
that will would sustain me in my Protestant position — 
I asked myself, who sent Archbishop Parker? 'For 
how can he preach except he be sent ?' Who put the 



5 U CCE SSI ON REP UDIA TED. a i 

Gospel into his hand? told him what it contained? 
what was the depositum of faith and sacraments and 
worship of the ' one, holy, Catholic Church' com- 
mitted to him, and commissioned him to teach that 
faith, dispense those sacraments, and conduct that 
worship, and, when death should come to terminate 
his Apostolic work, to hand on that ' depositum to the 
successors of the Apostles yet to arise ? I made this 
appeal to my conscience again and again. ' Who 
thus sent the first archbishop of Elizabeth, gave him 
his mission to act in tJiis or tJiat way for God ?' 

" When Elizabeth ascended the throne, I saw two 
powers only, who even claimed the right of spiritual 
jurisdiction of England, and thence the right of giving 
mission to exercise ' the office of a bishop in the Church 
of God !' the Pope and the queen ! The Pope sus- 
tained in his authority by the whole Chiireh in England ; 
the queen sustained by her Parliament only. The 
ChwcJi, therefore, in England, could not have com- 
missioned and sent this archbishop. SJie was utterly 
against him. Against him in her faith, her sacraments, 
her worship, her judgment, her authority ! she stood 
forth, with the successor of St. Peter at her head, pro- 
fessing the Catholic faith, dispensing the Catholic 
sacraments, and enforcing the Catholic ritual, and re- 
quiring all who went out under her authority to defend 
this faith, guard these sacraments, and observe this 
ritual ! The archbishop of Elizabeth appears, in defi- 
ance of the successor of St. Peter, professedly bearing 
another faith, other sacraments, and commissioned under 
another ritual ! Who sent him ? Whence derived he 
the authority to execute the office of a bishop in the 
mystical body of Christ — the one, holy, and Apostolic 



42 PRO TEST ANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN- 

Church. Really, I could discern no authority earlier 
than the queen and Parliament of England ! And, 
therefore, that my own commission to act for Christ 
had its origin in via7i /" 

Convinced by such conclusive and unanswerable 
arguments, drawn from a profound and conscientious 
study of the whole question in all its aspects and 
bearings, with the pages of Church histor}^ b'^^-S open 
before them, and the doctrine and canons and usages 
of the early Christian Church thoroughly sifted and 
scrutinized, many of the purest, most gifted and 
scholarly minds in the Anglican establishment in Eng- 
land, and the Episcopal Church in America have not 
only doubted the Anglican succession, but finding it 
to be a myth, have laid down their lucrative livings, to 
enter the Catholic Church as simple laymen, and re- 
ceived orders in the Church from bishops possessing 
Apostolic succession, or else, like Dr. Ives, have lived 
and died in the ranks of the laity, in the midst of the 
world, shining out as bright exemplars of heroic 
Christian virtue. Such in England are the Mannings, 
the Newmans, the Wilberforces, the Fabers, the Allies, 
and many others ; those in our own country we will 
forbear to me-ntion ; they are too well known, men 
whose massive intellectual build, comprehensive, culti- 
vated minds, logical acumen, vast and varied learning 
overshadow and completely dwarf, in our opinion, at 
least, those who have the hardihood to assert tliat no 
one competent to for7n a7i opinion, and who has taken the 
pains to investigate the matte}', has ever professed a doubt 
concerning the Anglican succession, and tJiat it is more 
demonstrably carionical and regular in all particulars 
than any other succession in Christendom. 



SUCCESSION REPUDIATED. 43 

No one has doubted the Anglican succession ! ! 
The whole Catholic Church doubts it, or rather posi- 
tively denies it, the Greek Church disowns it, the Prot- 
estant world ridicules the pretension, the whole of 
Christendom outside the Anglican and American 
Episcopal Church denies and rejects the unwarrantable 
claim. Yet outside of that comparatively small com- 
munion there must be some thoughtful men, compe- 
tent to form an opinion. Nay, on this point, as well as 
every other fundamental Christian tenet, there is divi- 
sion, even in the little body of the Anglican Church 
herself, and I am sure I need not reiterate that in the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in America, many not 
only doubt it, but scout the very notion. An Angli- 
can bishop, not many years ago, preaching on a solemn 
public occasion at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, de- 
nied it in strongest language, and the only reprimand 
he received was, that he was not asked to print 
his sermon ! Where were the Apostolic witnesses of 
the faith ? were they all sleeping sentinels on the 
watch towers of Sion? no one to give the alarm? no 
one to protest ? If Apostolical succession can be thus 
publicly denied by a bishop of the Church of England, 
are we not justified in placing credence in what a 
learned English writer, now happily a Catholic, author — 
among other genial productions — ^^of '' My Clerical 
Friends," which we would advise our Episcopal readers 
to peruse thoughtfully, says: *'The mass of our coun- 
try-men have so little esteem for the doctrines of the 
Christian priesthood and the ApostoHcal succession 
that they can hardly be persuaded to treat them seri- 
ously." The same thoughtful writer, who certainly 
h?.s th- 'Toi-ghly studied and dispassionately investigated 



44 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN 



the matter, though perhaps some would declare him 
incompetent to form an opinion, again says : " The 
modern English assertors of Apostolical succession 
know that the men who formed the Church of England 
and composed both its ritual and its theology, detested 
the very doctrines which //^rj/have learned to approve, 
and would have destroyed even that semblance of a 
hierarchy which they have preserved, if the Tudor 
sovereigns would have suffered them to do so." Nay, 
even Hooker, so often quoted as authority, did actually 
teach that, it was qiute possible to do without bishops ; 
that tJierc may be sometimes very jiist and sufficient rea- 
son to allow ordination i^tade without a bishops when, for- 
sooth, the exigence of necessity doth constrain to leave the 
usual ways of the Church, or when the Church must needs 
have some ordained, and iteit her hath, nor can have a bishop 
to ordain. The terse and w^ell-informed English writer 
above referred to says of Hooker, '' No one knew better 
than he that the first link in the Anglican hierarchy 
was forged, not by an Apostle or Patriarch, but by the 
masculine hand of Elizabeth Tudor, and therefore too 
prudent to expose the new hierarchy to a strain which 
it could not bear, he thought it good policy to say, 
*■ We are not simply without exception to urge a lineal 
descent from the Apostles by continued succession 
of bishops in every effectual ordination.' In life he 
had denied the Apostolical succession whenever 
the ' exigence of neccessity' made it superfluous, 
in death he uttered a still more energetic protest 
against it, without any necessity at all, by sending 
for, not an Anglican minister, but Saravia, who had 
never received or pretended to receive Episcopal or- 
dination." Not only then Cranmer and Barlow, but 



SUCCESSION REPUDIATED. ^r 

even the favorite Hooker ("wise in his generation and 
rightly styled by posterity, the judicious Hooker") 
thought lightly of Apostolical succession in the Angli- 
can Church, which, nevertheless, we are told was never 
doubted by any one capable of forming an opinion, 
and rests on the same evidence as the Scripture itself. 
But the reason given as an apology for the lovv^ views of 
these Reformers concerning the episcopate is too 
amusing: " How could they have known better while 
they were under the Papacy. Popes had taught them 
that bishops were only presbyters, in order to magnify 
themselves as the only and universal bishops." This 
we pronounce a positive and unqualified falsehood, but 
granting that, " such was the common teaching of 
school divines before the Reformation," how does it 
help the Anglican's case ? 

Anglicans themselves admit that a church in schism 
forfeits all right to the lawful exercise of hierarchical 
powers or jurisdiction ; that bishops of a schismatical 
com^munion could not lawfully, though they might 
validly, exercise ecclesiastical functions ; could not be 
admitted to a voice in a general council, or communi- 
cate with other bishops, until they retract their errors 
or schismatical principles, and then when returning to 
the unity of the Church, they should be formally rec- 
ognized by ecclesiastical authority and reinstated in 
their sees, or removed to others, or else remain sus- 
pended. Anglicans themselves admit that Apostolical 
succession cannot exist outside the true Church of God, 
and St. Augustine most positively declares that even 
those who maintained the integrity of faith, but fell 
from unity, were outside the pale of the Church. 
"You are with us," he says, "in baptism, in the creed, 



4.6 PROTESTANT EP I SCOP A L A ND A NGL ICA N 

in the other sacraments of the Lord, but in the spirit 
of unity, in the bond of peace — in fine in the Catholic 
Church itself — you are not with us." But like the 
Donatists and early heretics, Anglicans and Episcopa- 
lians justify their separation from the Church, their 
breach of unity, by urging the corruptions of the 
Church, the usurpations of the papacy. *' England in 
rejecting a usurping papacy fell back on her ancient 
Catholic rights, and began to renew and to regain, as 
her old law, all her primitive relations with all the 
Apostolic Sees." But they forget that one of the pleas 
for setting up a new establishment was that "" all the 
Apostolic Sees had erred in faith." '' England," we are 
told, '' is not in communion with Pius IX., for his new 
dogma rends him from communion with all his own 
predecessors and with all antiquity." But at her very 
setting out in life, the Church of England had solemnly 
declared that for upwards of eight hundred years the 
whole Church was sunk in damnable idolatry. 

We may paraphrase the answer given to a similar 
charge of the Donatists by the early doctors, thus : 
" Either the Church was so corrupted as to be no 
longer the Church of Christ, or it was not ; if it was, 
then the promises of Christ had failed, and His Church 
had ceased, the gates of hell had prevailed, He was no 
longer with His Church, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy 
Ghost, no longer dwelt with her ; there is then no suc- 
cession, no historical transmission of powers from the 
Apostles. But if the Church was still the Church of 
Christ, if Christ's promises did not fail, and if His 
plighted word was made good, that He should be with 
those whom He sent to the end of ages, then those 
who went out from her on pretence that she had erred 



SUCCESSION REPUDIA TED, 



47 



and had become corrupt, and that the corruptions of 
the Church rendered it impossible for them to remain 
in communion with her, simply condemn themselves, 
and render their claim to succession from the Apostles 
preposterous in the extreme. If their charge of apos- 
tacy and idolatry be true, how are they going to make 
connection with the pure primitive Church ? how over- 
leap that fearful chasm of upwards of eight hundred 
years of abominable corruptions, idolatry, heresy and 
crime? how stretch the chain of succession across that 
foul and reeking abyss ? Why Pius IX. has by one new 
error '' rent his communion with all antiquity, and 
Bishop Ryan, by the errors of his Church since the 
Vatican Council, or even since the Council of Trent, has 
lost all right to the name of Catholic, all claim to 
Apostolical succession," how then could the Anglican 
Church, after eight hundred years of such dreadful 
crimes and errors in even every Apostolic See, have 
been able to recover and transmit legitimate descent 
down to the reformers ? 

This, says a spicy English writer, is *' as if a man 
should contend proudly for a pedigree derived through 
countless generations of felons. What ! call the whole 
Catholic priesthood the spawn of Antichrist, and then 
attempt to prove that your orders are manifestly 
divine because you can trace them to that source ; 
revile the whole Catholic Church as ' the harlot of 
Babylon,' as twenty generations of Anglican bishops and 
clergy did, and then claim her as your mother ; sepa- 
rate from the Catholic Church on the ground that she 
was ' Antichristian,' and claim to be the legitimate des- 
cendants of Antichrist?" 

But if the Church did not thus err, apostatize, adul- 



48 A KGLICA X S UCCE SSI ON REP UDIA TED. 

terate the pure truths of Christianity, and become anti- 
christian, which most certainly she did not, for to as- 
sert that she did, in the face of Christ's own plighted 
word, '' that the gates of hell should not prevail against 
her," " that He himself would be with her all days," 
" that the Holy Spirit should abide with her forever, 
and teach her all truth," is blasphemous impiety ; then 
the Reformers broke off from the Church of Christ, 
severed the bonds of unity, and as schismatics and 
heretics the reformed bishops never had, as we said 
before, with Cardinal Wiseman, ''any ecclesiastical, 
hierarchical or Apostolical succession, authority, or 
jurisdiction whatever, and are in the eyes of the 
Church illegitimate intruders and usurpers." 



JF.1S MATTHEW PARKER COXSECRARED? 



49 



V. 

WAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? 

IF Parker was not validly consecrated, the chain of 
Apostolical succession in the Anglican Church, and, 
in consequence, in the Episcopal Church of America, is 
broken, the very first link is wanting, for as Water- 
worth remarks, '^ The episcopal sees, and, eventually, 
the cures throughout England, were supplied by men 
ordained and consecrated by Parker, and if Parker 
were not a consecrated bishop, then neither were the 
Anglican clergy and prelacy episcopally ordained nor 
consecrated." To realize more fully how the whole 
episcopate of the Anglican Church hangs on the valid- 
ity of Parker's consecration, and how true it is that he 
is the connecting link between the old and new hier- 
archy of England, we must remember that at the time 
of Parker's real or supposed consecration, December 
17th, 1559, there was but one lawful titular bishop 
throughout the realm ; every see but one, that of 
LlandafY, was vacant. Dr. Heylin, a Protestant histor- 
ian, informs us that there were no more than fifteen 
living of that sacred order, and that they all, but Kitchen 
of LlandafT, whom another Protestant historian calls the 
calamity of his see, refused the oath of supremacy, and 
were in consequence deprived of their sees. There were 
twenty-six sees within the realm ; two of them were 
archbishoprics. Of these, one archbishopric, that of 



^o 



IF AS MA TTHEW PARKER CO K SEC R A TED? 



Canterbury, and nine episcopal sees were vacant by 
cc:ith ; tiie other archbishop and bishops, Dr. Heylin 
s i\"s, " being called in the beginning of July, 1559, t>y 
certain of the lords of the council comnnissionated 
thereunto in due form of law, were then and there re- 
cuired to take the oath of supremacy according to the 
law made in that behalf. Kitchen of Llandaff alone 
takes it. "'^ ^ "^ By all the rest it was refused." 
After giving the names of every Catholic prelate in. 
the realm who refused, they were not, he says, all de- 
prived until the end of September. " But now," he 
continues, " tliey had hardened one another to a reso- 
lution of standing out unto the last, and were there- 
upon deprived of their several bishoprics, as the law 
required. A punishment which came not on them all 
at once, some of them being borne withal (in hope of 
their conformity and submission) till the end of Sep- 
tember." " The civil power," says Waterw^orth, *' armed 
with the oath of supremacy, had destroyed the hierarchy 
of the Church. The Parliament had thrown down, but 
how was it to build up? Was the queen or the gov- 
ernment to use the same authority which had un- 
bishoped the Church, to create a hierarchy." 

This scrap of English history lets in a world of light 
on the cradle of the Anglican establishment, and shows 
tliat its legal title, " the Church of England by law and 
Pirliament established,'* belies the claim to Apostolical 
crigiiu stamps i'. as a royal foundation, and shows, more- 
over, how ridiculous and absurd the pretence, that at 
tlic Reformation a return was made to ancient rules, 
and th.it the Church of England only fell back on her 
ancient rights. " Let those who pretend such rever- 
ence foi' ancient canons show," — as Cardinal Wiseman 



WA S MA T THE W PA RKER CONSE CRA TED ? c j 

replies to the assertion, that : '' On the accession of 
Queen Elizabeth, the true successors of the Apostles 
in the English Church were reinstated in their rights," 
*' the canons whereby the deprivation of bishops, and 
the appointment of new ones by letters missive, are 
granted to the civil rulers. If they allow the authority 
of Elizabeth to act as she did, then let them be con- 
sistent and admit that of Mary to act similarly ; and 
moreover, let them give us their warrant ior such 
authority, in the ancient Church to which they appeal. 
If they consider it to have been usurpation in Eliza- 
beth, * of the iron hand and of the iron maw,' as some 
of them have called her, then is their entire hierarchy 
based upon an unjustifiable and tyrannical act of power, 
■and they who compose it are intruders." Who deposed, 
the same learned cardinal asks, these sixteen bishops, 
that then formed the hierarchy of the English Church? 
who reinstated the others? and who were reinstated? 
We will await reply to these queries, and in the mean- 
time, we beg to call the attention of that impartial 
secular authority who thinks " that there is a perfect 
legal and historical identity, so to speak, of person, 
between the Church of England before the Reforma- 
tion, and the Church of England after the Reforma- 
tion," to the historical fact that in the beginning of the 
month of December, 1559, the Church of England had 
but one lawful, canonically instituted bishop, and he 
died in 1563, without attemptmg to canonically fill the 
vacant sees or provide for the transmission of the 
episcopal order, or the legitimate succession of any cor- 
porate witness to the identity of the faith and Church 
of England, nay, absolutely refusing to lend himself to 
every attempt to keep up such identity and transmit 



52 



'V.-! S .If A TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 



such episcopal succession. " The supremacy of the 
Pope had been rejected ; in the queen had been in- 
vested the supreme government of the Church." We 
quote again Rev. Mr. Waterworth : " Every bond be- 
tween the crown and the hierarchy had been broken. 
England is without a hierarchy, and even if the chain 
of episcopal succession could be preserved unbroken, 
what hand could unite the severed link of episcopal 
jurisdiction? But something must be done; it was an 
emergency in which ordinary difficulties, if they could 
not be removed, must be beaten down or passed over ; 
and though the more observing and learned might 
note the flaw in the episcopal blazonry, the glitter of 
that dignity, and the actual possession of sees, to 
which authority had for centuries been attached, would 
no doubt conceal the defect from the eyes of the mul- 
titude." 

Parker was elected to fill the vacant see of Canter- 
bury, August 1st, 1559, t>ut who was to consecrate 
him ? The bishops of the realm were obstinate. They 
were not to be brow-beaten or intimidated ; the oath 
of supremacy had been tendered and refused, the Eng- 
lish episcopate had retrieved its honor, redeemed it- 
self from the degrading cowardice and mean servility 
shown in Henry's reign ; many had already been de- 
posed, and sent to the Fleet. Some, as Heylin notes. 
" were borne withal in hope of their conformity and 
submission until the end of September." It was all 
important to the Reformers to have Parker consecrated 
by some Catholic prelates in order to maintain a sem- 
blance at least of episcopal succession and identity 
with the old Church. The severity exercised towards 
some would, it was hoped, have its influence on the 



JVAS MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED? 



53 



others, and make them more pliant and submissive to 
the queen's commands. A commission was con- 
sequently issued on the 9th of September to Tonstall 
of Durham, Bourne of Bath and Wells, Pole of Peter- 
borough, and Kitchen of Llandaff, and to these were 
joined Barlow and Scorey, returned refugees, legally de- 
prived under the previous reign, who not being then 
elected to any see were simply styled bishops. This 
commission failed ; doubtless because the Catholic 
bishops refused to h<tzova^ participes criniinis by assis- 
ting to consecrate Parker. Mackintosh, in his '' His- 
tory of England," says : " These prelates, who must 
have considered such an act a profanation, conscien- 
tiously refused." Canon Estcourt remarks, " It is dif- 
ficult now to understand how any one could expect 
that a commission would be executed which bore so 
gross an insult on the face of it. Not merely to require 
them to consecrate a married priest, notoriously sus- 
pected of heresy, but to join with them two suspended 
excommunicated ecclesiastics, calling themselves 
bishops, relapsed heretics, and apostate religious, was 
sufificient of itself to prevent the execution of the 
mandate." Shortly after, and most probably in con- 
sequence or in punishment of this refusal, Tonstall, 
Bourne and Pole were deprived, leaving, as we before 
mentioned, only one see in the whole realm, with a 
legitimate incumbent, one legal titular bishop in the 
whole English Church, Kitchen of Llandaff, and he, 
presumably, because, it was hoped, as he had owned 
the queen's supremacy, he would yet yield obedience 
to her commands and consecrate her newly appointed 
archbishop. This brief chapter in the history of the 
Anglican establishment we deem important, as showing 



-4 ^J^-iS MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 

the straits to which the queen and Parliament were 
reduced to secure a legitimate episcopate in the 
nascent royal establishment, and how long and pain- 
fully Elizabeth and her ministers travailed in giving 
birth to the new hierarchy. It may also help us to 
understand the importance attached to question of 
fact, and the legitimacy and validity of the consecra- 
tion of the first of the new-born Church, the first link 
in a new line of prelates, the parent stock to which the 
clergy of the Anglican and Episcopal Churches must 
trace their pedigree, and from which alone they can 
prove their legitimacy, their mission, or orders. One 
attempt to get a lawful bishop for the Reformed 
Church, to weld on to the old, venerable chain of 
Apostolical succession, in the see of Canterbury, this 
new link forged by the masculine hand of a Tudor 
queen, to engraft this suckling scion of royalty on 
the original Catholic stock, from which alone it could 
draw sap, vitality, fecundity, failed, proved an utter 
abortion. Whether the next attempt succeeded better 
we will examine presently. 

We come now to the facts regarding Parker's con- 
secration and the validity of the act, but we wish it 
distinctly understood that this is a secondary question, 
as far as the Catholic Church and her doctrine are con- 
cerned, for on the principles on which the primitive 
Church has always acted, and which are so clearly and 
distinctly enunciated by her in the early and Apostolic 
ages, and which are in fact recognized by Anglicans 
and acted on by all religious denominations, the An- 
glican Church, and therefore the Episcopal Church of 
America, have, and can have, no connecting link v/ith 
the Apostolic Church, no Apostolic succession. This 



IVAS MA TTHEW PARKER CONSECRA TED? 



55 



being the case, we need go no further, to disprove the 
claim of Anglican succession. But we are willing to 
go further, and absolutely deny the validity of Parker's 
consecration, and thus " strike at the very root of all 
pretensions in the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal 
Church of America to Apostolical succession." Pre- 
mising again, what we have already said, that the val- 
idity of consecration and the Apostolical succession of 
the Anglican bishops are quite different questions, we 
will now carefully and dispassionately examine and dis- 
cuss the vexed question of the validity of Parker's con- 
secration, a question of vital importance to Anglican 
orders, a question of life or death to the Episcopate 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. For 
though Catholics may refute and disprove Anglican and 
Episcopalian pretensions to Apostolical succession, 
even conceding valid consecration of their bishops, the 
case of the latter is hopeless, their position untenable, 
unless they can prove to a demonstration, and show be- 
yond the shadow of reasonable doubt, that the first 
Anglican bishops under Elizabeth were actually and 
validly consecrated. 

All the Catholic bishops, as we have seen, refused 
to participate in the sacrilege, refused to lay hands on 
the would-be prelate ; and now in the whole realm 
there Is but one bishop with jurisdiction, but one 
bishop holding a see, and him, Camden styles the 
calamity of his see. Surely, then, the succession is in 
imminent peril ; 'tis a critical juncture for the royal 
establishment of the English Church. How was the 
crisis got over? We are naturally a little curious on 
this subject, and we can well Imagine the state of 
suspense and anxiety of those whose whole religious 



56 



PFAS MA TTHE IV PARKER CUNSECRA TLB? 



system, orders, mission, prelacy and priesthood hang 
in the balance, depend on the satisfactory solution of 
the question, Was Parker validly consecrated ? For 
Anglicanism and Episcopalianism the issue is life or 
death. Our strenuous advocate of Anglican succession 
concedes as much, for although he demurs somewhat 
to the assertion that if Parker was not consecrated, and 
validly consecrated, the Anglican succession fails, yet he 
is willing to let it be assumed, " for if Parker was not 
duly consecrated, it is certain no bishop in Christendom 
can prove his orders." This is a strange proposition. 
What does it mean? surely all the bishops in Christen- 
dom do not derive their orders from Parker. All the 
Anglican and Protestant^ Episcopal prelates do, and it 
may most truly be said, that if Parker was not duly 
consecrated, it is certain no bishop in the Anglican 
Church or Episcopal Church can prove his orders, or 
rather, that there is no such thing as a bishop in these 
denominations. This we assert, notwithstanding the 
puerile claim made by some Anglican writers, that the 
apostate De Dominis, or a pretended Irish archbishop 
assisting at a consecration of some Anglican bishop in 
the 17th century would suffice to restore the broken 
line of succession in the Anglican Church. Can they 
really be serious in making such assertions, or is it not 
trifling with the intelligence and conscience of those 
who look up to them for instruction in Christian faith 
and church organism ? 

Does it not seem puerile trifling to assert that "the 
Pope sent Archbishop Bedini to America to remedy 
the first defective succession?" and again, " tlie succes- 
sion communicated to us, in two instances, by De 
Dominis, archbishop of Spolato in Delmatia, in the 



IV A S MA TTHE W PA RKER CONSE CA'A TED ? 57 

seventeenth century, transmits of itself, a better and 
more valid succession than the Nuncio Bedini conferred 
on Dr. Bayley, the present Roman Catholic metro- 
politan." To Catholics this is simply ludicrous. In the 
year 1853, three new sees were regularly and canonically 
erected in the province of New York, viz. : Newark, N. J., 
Burlington, Vt., and Brooklyn, N. Y., and Bishops 
Bayley, De Goesbriand and Loughlin were regularly and 
canonically appointed by the Holy See to fill the same. 
The usual rescript for the consecration, empowering any 
duly consecrated bishop in communion with the Holy 
See to consecrate them, was forwarded to the metropoli- 
tan, Archbishop Hughes, of New York. Availing him- 
self of the presence of the illustrious Archbishop Bedini, 
who happened to be in New York, having come to this 
country on a special mission having absolutely no 
reference to the consecration of bishops or the intro- 
ducing of a new succession, Archbishop Hughes re- 
quested him to officiate at the consecration of the new 
bishops, much in the same way as Dr. Brownell had 
commissioned Dr. De Lancey to act for him in the case 
of Dr. Coxe's promotion to the see of Western New 
York. Yet this, we are gravely told, was all designed 
by the Pope to introduce a new succession, and remedy a 
defective one, when every one knows that the Pope had 
nothing to do with the matter, and presumably knew 
nothing of the nuncio officiating and consecrating 
until after the consecration had actually taken place. 
And so little idea had the American hierarchy of 
any need of an amended succession to be derived from 
this illustrious prelate that although since the year 
1853, many new bishops have been consecrated in the 
United States, and among them the present bishop of 



58 



IVAS MA TTHE IV PARKER CONSECRA TED? 



Buffalo, until very recently not one of the bishops con- 
secrated by Mons. Bedini was called upon to transmit 
the new succession. In the year 1873, indeed Archbishop 
Bayley, as metropolitan of the see of Baltimore, to which 
he had been transferred from Newark in 1872, did con- 
secrate Bishop Gross of Savannah, so that we must con- 
gratulate our esteemed friend and brother of Savannah 
that he has at length resurrected the amended succes- 
sion, after it had lain dead or dormant for nearly twenty 
years. 

Yet with characteristic hardihood we are referred to 
the Civilta Catolica as authority for this absurd and 
puerile statement. The Civilta Catolica, an able and 
generally very correct periodical, edited by Jesuits, 
naturally took notice of the very solemn ceremony 
which took place in the Cathedral of New York, but 
that it gives any ground for these inferences and 
absurd assertions that tJic first consecration zvas so de- 
fective that the Pope tried to mend it by a second succes- 
sion, or that by the second or Bedini consecration a second 
Roman Catholic succession started in Nezv York, we 
absolutely deny. But when a church dignitary out- 
rages common decency by echoing the gross calumnies 
of infidel revolutionists, and maligns the character of 
one of the most amiable, gentle and gentlemanly 
of men, an illustrious and estimable prelate, now gone 
to his reward, by calling him a butcher and virtual 
murderer, and when those publicly and triumphantly re- 
futed charges and lying assertions against the character, 
forsooth,/;'^;// iv'kicJi the second Roman Catholic succes- 
sion started in New York, are rehashed and served up 
manifestly for the purpose of damaging and vilifying 
the Catholic episcopate, may Vv-e not retort in his own 



IVAS aI AT THE IV PARKER COX SECRA 'TED i 



59 



language, and ask, zulure is the morality of throiuiug 02it 
such monstrous, not blunders, but downright falsehoods, 
in assaulting the spiritual character of others ? 

But to return. Was Matthew Parker, then, ever 
validly consecrated ? What was the issue of subsequent 
attempts after the first failure? 

This, as we have seen, is the all-important question 
for our Anglican friends. On its solution hangs the 
fate of the whole Anglican system, for on Parker's 
valid consecration depends the validity of orders in 
the Anglican Church ; and without valid orders there 
can be no shadow of a claim to Apostolical succession, 
or legitimate descent from the Apostles, or corporate 
identity with the primitive Church of Christ. Please 
to remember, dear readers, what we have already de- 
monstrated, that this question, so vital to Anglicanism 
and Episcopalianism and to all their vaunted claimxS, 
is of little consequence to the Catholic Church, and 
in no wise affects the Catholic argument against 
the pretensions and claims made by them to Apos- 
tolical succession, or identity with the Church of the 
Apostles. We discuss this question, then, not through 
any necessity to make good our argument, or to refute 
their claims, but to meet them in their last trench, 
and entirely cut the ground from beneath their feet ; 
to take away the last shadow of a claim to Apos- 
tolicity. To prove this, without going over the whole 
ground again, to show that, even with valid orders, 
they have no mission, no legitimate authority to teach, 
because they themselves are not sent, it is only neces- 
sary to remember that there w^as in the whole realm 
of England only one legitimate bishop, occupying a 
see, exercising a jurisdiction, and he refused to par- 



6o ^-4S MA TTHE IV PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 

ticipate in the ceremony of Parker's consecration. 
Not one of those who are said to have consecrated 
him, and who are named in the Lambeth Register, had 
any jurisdiction. Barlow, Scorey, Coverdale, and 
Hodgkins are designated without any title, even in the 
register, and such of them as were afterwards con- 
firmed and appointed to sees, were so confirmed 
by Parker himself, showing that they had no juris- 
diction until after Parker's consecration, and could 
give none, 7iemo dat quod non habet. But how could 
Parker give to them, or any others, what no one gave 
to him? What a miserable subterfuge, then, it is to 
trace through Bauchier, Neville, and Chicheley, suc- 
cession to a Roman Pontiff, when nobody denies that 
the Church of England had valid orders and legiti- 
mate succession, down to the time of the Reformation. 
In the see of Canterbury from Augustine, sent, con- 
firmed and commissioned by Gregory, down to Cardi- 
nal Pole, sent, commissioned and legitimately appointed 
to that venerable archiepiscopal see, by the Sovereign 
Pontiff, Julius III., there was a continuous line, an un- 
broken succession of corporate witnesses, succesors of 
the Apostles. T»he whole difficulty, then, is in Parker's 
succession. How has he been linked on to the chain 
coming down from the Apostles ? No Catholic bishop 
would consecrate him, no bishop exercising, or pos- 
sessing "authority, mission, jurisdiction, or a see, would 
lay hands on him ; there is not only no concurrence 
of the sovereign Pontiff, of the Patriarch, which con- 
currence the canons of the Council of Nice make 
essential to a canonical consecration ; there is not only 
no confirmation of a metropolitan, or approbation of 
the bishops of the province, nay, the pretended conse- 



WA S MA T THE W PA RKER CONSE CRA TED ? 6 1 

cration was in direct opposition to the Sovereign Pontiff 
and every legitimate bishop in the realm ; so that the at- 
tempt to preserve Episcopal succession violates every 
precedent, and every canonical regulation of the 
Christian Church, and as Rev. Mr. Waterworth, whose 
valuable lectures we have freely used and made our 
own, says, the new bishops of the Anglican establish- 
ment separated themselves, not only in faith, from the 
episcopacy of Christendom, but broke through those 
ordinances which their predecessors had for centuries 
regarded as Apostolical, authoritative and binding. 
This, moreover, shows how consistent they are in 
their appeals to the canons and the ancient councils, 
when in order to get an archbishop, or the first link in 
the new episcopal chain, they had to violate all ec- 
clesiastical law, run counter to Apostolical precedents, 
and cast to the winds the canons of Nice. Yet, though 
they have hopelessly lost Apostolical succession, they 
have valid orders, if Parker was validly consecrated. 

Before this can be positively, and with certainty 
asserted, it must be proved beyond the possibility of 
doubt or cavil, (i), that the consecration of Lambeth 
chapel actually took place, and as the chief proof of this 
is the Lambeth register, its authenticity, or genuineness 
must be demonstrated ; (2), that Barlow was himself 
consecrated ; and (3), that he used a valid form in 
Parker's consecration. The learned Dr. Kenrick, in his 
exhaustive treatise on Anglican ordinations, to which 
we have before referred, and from which we have 
freely borrowed', states the whole question so intelli- 
gently and clearly, that we make no apology for the 
length of the following quotation : 

" Matthew Parker was chosbn to be the first Protes- 



62 . ^AS MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 

tant archbishop of Canterbury. It is not pretended 
that he was con'secrated by any of the Catholic bishops. 
According to the advocates of Anglican orders, he 
received episcopal consecration from Barlow, who had 
been made bishop by Henry VIII., and who, on this 
occasion, is said to have used the form of ordination 
known as King Edward's form, in whose reign it had 
been introduced. 

" With regard to this important fact, there are three 
questions — all of which must be satisfactorily answered 
in the affirmative, before those who trace their orders 
to Matthew Parker can conclude that they are validly 
ordained. First, Was Parker, truly consecrated by 
Barlow, in the manner declared ? Second, Was Barlow 
himself consecrated ? Third, Was King Edward's form 
a vaHd form ? 

"If these three questions can be satisfactorily an- 
swered, then the ordinations of the English Church are 
valid ; its bishops have the same episcopal character as 
the Catholic bishops ; its ministers are priests, equally 
as those who minister at Catholic altars ; in a word, the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy has been preserved in the Eng- 
lish Church, although, of course, being separated from 
the communion of the Catholic Church, they are with- 
ered branches, through which the vivifying sap of Apos- 
tolical jurisdiction does not circulate, and which, con- 
sequently, instead of bearing fruit, impede the rays of 
light and grace from reaching the deluded people that 
repose under their scanty shade. 

'' But if a single one of the above three facts be dis- 
proved ; if a single one of them be not absolutely cer- 
tain, although somewhat probable ; if positive and 
unsuspicious testimony be not at hand whereby 



tV^S JIfA TrilEW PARKER CONSECRA TED? 



63 



all tJircc can be established ; then the vaUdity of 
the AngHcan ordinations is either positively dis- 
proved, or not absolutely certain ; and consequently, 
there can be no obligation to listen to men, who can- 
not prove that they have received a participation of 
the Apostolic ministry, whereby they are emj^owered 
to preach the Gospel, and minister at the altar. Noth- 
ing short of certainty on this point, can, in such a case, 
justify priest or people in admitting the validity of 
such ordinations." 

Parker's and Barlow's consecration are questions of 
fact, and not of doctrine, questions of history, matters 
of opinion to be determined by historical research, 
and on such evidence as would suf^ce in any other 
question or fact of history. " But whatever opinion 
we may form on either or both these questions it is 
absolutely certain that, on account of the form said 
to be used in the consecration of Parker, that devised 
by Edward VI., Anglican, and consequently Protestant 
Episcopal orders, are vitiated and invalidated." This, 
after all, is the only important point : Anglican orders 
are invalid on account of the invalidity of the form 
invented by Cranmer, or, as the act has it, devised 
by Edward VI., and used, if any was used, or if 
there was anything more than the Nag's Head farce, in 
the consecration of Parker. To this point we would 
prefer to confine ourselves, as it would simplify the 
whole controversy, as Canon Raynal intimates in his 
admirable little treatise on " The Ordinal of Edward 
VI.," to concede '' that Barlow was a true bishop, and 
that he consecrated Parker on the seventeenth of De- 
cember, 1559." There is no necessity for us, and can 
be iittle advantage in f,. Hewing Drs. Mason, Lee, and 



64 W^ S MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 

Other Anglican writers, in their laborious attempts to 
prove the reality of Barlow's and Parker's consecra- 
tion. With them failure to prove either is fatal to 
their cause, whilst the most complete and satisfactory 
demonstration of both will avail absolutely nothing 
towards the solution of the real question at issue, for 
without a valid form no sacrament can be conferred, 
and if the form used in the consecration of the first 
Anglican bishop, on whom confessedly the Anglican 
hierarchy depends, from whom Anglican orders are ad- 
mitted to be derived, was radically defective or invalid, 
then there are no orders, no priesthood, no hierarchy in 
the Anglican or Episcopal Church. We feel then that 
it is only to entangle and complicate matters, to discuss 
these historical questions, which, from the nature of the 
subject and the contradictory testimonies of opposing 
and interested witnesses, can never be satisfactorily and 
conclusively settled. Yet as such stress has been laid 
on these comparatively unimportant points, and so 
much cavil over some statements, we must turn aside 
again from the main issue, and after correcting some 
misrepresentations, we shall briefly notice some of the 
grounds on which Parker's consecration and the Lam- 
beth Register and Barlow's episcopal character have 
been questioned or impugned ; grounds which, even if 
they fail to persuade, will hardly fail to convince the 
reader that it grates harshly on believing ears, nay, 
sounds almost like blasphemy, to assert that '' the canon 
of Scripture rests on no better evidence" than the con- 
secration of Barlow. or Parker. And yet this, by im- 
plication, at least, is asserted by those who assume 
that the succession in the Church of England *' rests on 
the same kind of proof by which we receive the canon 



IFylS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED'^ 



65 



of holy Scripture." We maintain that even if the 
Lambeth Register be genuine, and the consecration of 
Parker took place, as asserted, at the hands of Barlow, 
an apostate monk, it is very doubtful that Barlow 
himself was ever consecrated, or anything more than 
bishop elect. And even if Barlow was a regularly con- 
secrated bishop, and went through the form of con- 
secrating Parker, the form used, viz.: that devised, as the 
act has it, by Edward, was notoriously insufficient and 
invalid. 

But what will you, what can you think, of the honesty, 
or truthfulness, or morality, of any person who quoting 
freely from Dr. Lingard, and presumably with Dr. Lin- 
gard before him, makes that author testify to the validity 
of Parker's consecration! '' Dr. Lingard," we are told, 
" shows that this act of itself proves the consecration 
of Parker to have been in all respects regular and 
validly performed, according to the reformed Ordinal." 
Now, Dr. Lingard in the very correspondence referred 
to, expressly says, that he confines himself to the fact 
of Parker's consecration, but Y\^hether it was valid or 
invalid was a question with which, as a writer of his- 
tory, he had no concern. Dr. Lingard, like many other 
Catholic writers, investigated the fact of Parker's con- 
secration, and hesitated not to acknowledge his belief 
therein, but Dr. Lingard did not, and no Catholic can, 
without rashness, acknowledge its validity. 

Though Dr. Lingard, and some other respectable 
Catholic authors concede the reality of Parker's con- 
secration, and believe Barlow was a bishop, and ac- 
knov/ledge the Lambeth Register as a genuine docu- 
ment ; and although we, for argument's sake, and to 
eliminate unimportant side issues, that serve only to 



66 ^4 S MA T THE W PA RKER CONSE CRA TED ? 

complicate, embarrass, and obscure the main question, 
would prefer to concede the same, yet in order to 
prove that "somebody has not cruelly imposed on 
us, ia the matter o£ the Nag's Head fable," and that 
'' all respectable Roman Catholics do not dismiss the 
story of the ' Nag's Read' witli contempt," we shall 
cite, names as respectable, perhaps, as even those of 
Dr. Lingard, and the AngHcan defenders of the Lam- 
beth consecration : and authorities, perhaps, as grave 
and trustworthy as those produced by them, disowning 
and disproving, or what in our case is equivalent to 
that, serioush' questioning, and throwing grave doubts 
upon, (i), the fact of Parker's consecration at Lam.- 
beth ; (2), the register on which the proof mainly 
rests ; (3), and especially on Barlow's ov.ii consecration. 
Yet we do not pretend to settle these quebtions ; proofs 
pro and co?i, must be weighed, and each one must 
decide for himself ; to us, and to our argument, and 
our cause, the decision is immaterial, for we hold, and 
think we can prove, that even conceding all these 
points, the consecration of Parker was certainly invalid, 
for reasons to be given hereafter, showing that a legi- 
timate, and recognized sacramental form, as well as a 
due intention in the minister, are requisite for the 
valid adiriinistration of orders. 

Now, as to the Nag's Head story, which vre are 
told. '• all respectable Catholic writers dismiss with 
contempt," Dr. Kenrick. " a respectable prelate," ad- 
duces quite an array of respectable Cath_olic names, 
not only not dismissing the story witk contempt, but 
vouching for its truth. We are indeed told that 
the late Hugh Davey Evans, a profound and learned 
ornam.ent of the Marviand bar, '' has not left a shred 



IV A S 31 A TTHE IV PARKER CON SEC R A TED ? 6/ 

of Dr. Kenrick's cause untwisted or unrent," but 
we beg to be excused for not accepting this bare 
assertion, for, although we have not been able to pro- 
cure a copy of Mr. Evans' able essay, we have seen the 
second edition of Dr. Kenrick's valuable work, revised 
and augmented, in which he replies to Mr. Evans' criti- 
cisms, in a most masterly manner, and we still find 
untivisted and unrent, intact and unimpaired, every sub- 
stantial link, every strand in his chain of unanswerable 
arguments against the " Validity of Anglican Ordina- 
tions and Anglican claims to Apostolical succession." 
We may, moreover, unhesitatingly affirm that the pe- 
rusal of Mr. Evans' essay will not " force on any can- 
did mind the conviction that so respectable a man as 
Dr. Kenrick could hardly have undertaken such a 
task, except under some compulsion of superiors to 
which, as in the later matter of infallibility, he pros- 
tituted his own convictions, under the remorseless dic- 
tation of Jesuits." We are satisfied, in the second 
place, that no profound and learned ornament of the 
Maryland bar. or any other bar, in fact very few besides 
the writer whom we are reviewing, would have theim- 
pertinence to charge a respectable prelate, a high-toned 
■gentleman, with such cringing servility and baseness 
of soul, as to prostitute his talents, at the dictation of 
any m.an, or set of men, to disseminate error, or write 
in any cause against his own convictions. We are satis- 
fied, in the third place, that the independence of charac- 
ter, uncompromising firmness, and stubborn self-asser- 
tion born of conscious intellectual endowments, which 
may at times carr\' a man to extremes, or at least make 
him appear to occupy a false position, and which, unless 
safe-guarded by genuine humility, and rare Christian 



^S ^^^-i S MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 

piety, may be perilous to faith, are at the same time 
surest guarantees against sycophancy, and servile pros- 
titution of talents or mean pandering to human power. 
Such characteristics belong to those who rebel 
against a divine authoritv, or refuse submission to a 
divinely authorized and infallible teacher. 

X\\ "Old Catholic" bishop, like Reinkens, may pro- 
fess absolute dependence on, and unreserved submis- 
sion to civil rulers, and the will, and good pleasure of 
those in power, for the hireling, wdiose own the sheep are 
not, fleeth when the wolf cometh to snatch, and scatter, 
and devour the sheep, becmise lie is a Jiireling^ and hath 
no care for the sheep ; as an able eloquent Catholic 
deputy in the Reichsrath said, commenting on Rein- 
kens's first would-be charge to an unknown, and unde- 
termined flock ; but the Catholic prelate will not betray 
his trust, or compromise his conscience, or degrade his 
manhood, at the bidding or dictation of any man, or 
any merely human authority, whilst he freely submits 
to God, and vindicates his God-given freedom and 
manhood, by the most implicit and unreserved sub- 
mission of himself, his intellect, and will,, to the au- 
thority and law of God. wSome cannot understand 
this, and hence, v^diilst they wonder at our not accepting 
the dictum of our ozuii Catholic historian, Dr. Lingard, 
they are indignant and even abusive, because a Catho- 
lic bishop acknowledges an infallible Church, and an 
infallible Pope, and bows a willing and cheerful obedi- 
ence to the decisions of an infallible oecumenical 
council. We are moreover satisfied, that howsoever 
a law}xr may, by special pleading, assail the arguments 
of Dr. Kenrick, or differ with him, in regard to the 
true interpretation and force of legal documents, or 



IVAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? 



69 



demur to some of his principles or criteria for deter- 
mining what records are genuine, and what spurious, 
or even controvert some of his particular conclusions, 
yet any unbiassed man, who reads his " Anglican Or- 
dinations," and ponders seriously his replies to objec- 
tions urged by Anglicans against the so-called Nag's 
Head fabrication, and his answer, paragraph by para- 
graph, to Dr. Lingard's arguments, must admit that he 
has vindicated, as he proposed to do, the old English 
Catholic divines, who, according to Dr. Husenbeth, 
for, at least, iipwai'ds of two ceizturics, regarded tJie 
Nag' s Head consecration as a fact, the certainty ofzvhich 
was SI L stained by stubborn evidence, from the charge of 
.blind credulity, or a determined will to deny the best 
authenticated facts. He did not undertake — he tells 
us himself, and we say the same for ourselveS' — '' to es- 
tablish the truth of the Nag's Head consecration ; but 
merely to examine whether it be so entirely destitute 
of probability or proof, as has been pretended ; and 
whether the vindicators of Catholic faith, who publicly 
avowed their belief in its reality, at a period when they 
had better opportunities of ascertaining the truth 
than we now can possibly be supposed to have, were 
imposed on by an absurd tale." 

Among those distinguished divines is Dr. Talbot, 
archbishop of Dublin, who in a treatise on "The Nul- 
lity of the Prelate clergy in England," says : " It is 
now a century of years since the Nag's Head story 
happened. It has constantly been related, and cred- 
ited by wise men, as certain truth, ever since the year 
1559 (t^^^ year it was acted in): it was never contra- 
dicted by any, until it was imagined by our adversa- 
ries that the new registers (Mason's), might contest 



70 



F/AS MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED? 



with our ancient tradition, and make the Nag's Head 
story seem improbable, in the year 1613, of which no 
man doubted, for the space of fifty-two years before. 
The Catholic bishops and doctors of Queen Mary's time 
were sober and wise men ; they beheved the story ; 
and recounted it to Parsons, Fitzherbert, Dr. Kellison, 
Holiwood, Dr. Champney, Fitzsimmons, etc. Parsons 
believed it, Fitzherbert and the rest above named, 
gave so much credit to it, that they published it in 
print." We find in an appendix to ''Dodd's Church 
History of England," a dissertation containing a sum- 
mary of the arguments employed to support both sides 
of the controversy concerning the Nag's Head ordina- 
tion. Dodd cites Dr. Champney, who, after a lengthy 
account of the whole transaction, how they met at the 
Nag's Head ; how the old man Kitchen of Llandaff, 
feigning blindness, refused to consecrate ; how they 
then turned upon him as an old fool who imagined 
that they could not be bishops unless greased \ how 
Scorey took the Bible, and laying it on their shoulders 
and saying, ''take authority to preach the word of God 
sincerely," they rose up bishops, concludes thus : "This 
whole narration, without adding or detracting any 
word pertaining to the substance of the matter, I have 
heard, oftener than once, of Mr. Thomas Bluet, a grave 
learned, and judicious priest ; he having received it of 
Mr. Neal, a man of good sort and reputation. -^ ^ * 
Again, Mr. Bluet had other good means to be informed 
of. this matter, being a long time prisoner with Dr. 
Watson, bishop of Lincoln, and divers other men of 
mark, of the ancient clergy, in whose time, and in 
whose sight, as a man may say, this matter was done. 
Of this narration there are, I think, as many witnesses 



PVAS MA TTHE IV PAI^KER CONSECRA TED? 



71 



yet living, as there are priests remaining alive, that 
have been prisoners with Mr. Bluet, in Wisbeach 
Castle ; where I also heard it of him." The historian 
then gives the nahies and dates, and works of the 
authors, avIio have handed down to posterity and pub- 
lished the Nag's Head consecration ; and referring to 
Dr. Talbot's " Nullity of the Prelate clergy," anno 1659, 
he says: "Wherein the learned author produces sev- 
eral proofs, in confirmation of the account given by 
Champney." Again, after giving the opposite views of 
writers of the Church of England at considerable 
length, he subjoins: "It would exceed my designed 
brevity to make a distinct reply to these exceptions 
Protestant writers have made against the Nag's Head 
story. But Dr. Talbot, the Catholic archbishop of 
Dublin, having considered them very fully and learn- 
edly, in his treatise on the Ntillity, etc., I remit the 
reader to that work, where he may be more fully in- 
formed of all the particulars belonging to this contro- 
ve?rsy." '' From v/hich," says Rev. Mr. Tierney, F.R.S., 
F.S.A., ''it is evident that Dodd was inclined to favor 
the story of the Nag's Head consecration," though he 
(Mr. Tierney) felt compelled to adopt the opposite 
opinion. Champney, in his treatise, De vocatione ininis- 
troritm, positively asserts: ''That not only Catholics of 
unquestionable integrity, who were eye-witnesses of 
the affair, testify to the solemn meeting at the Nag's 
Head ; but also John Stowe, that most famous chrono- 
grapher of England, a professor of the reformed re- 
ligion, is witness of the same, who diligently inquired 
into all circumstances of this action, though he feared 
to relate them in his chronicle." It is evident that Dr, 
Milner, F.S.A., who is not an ignorant man, nor one 



72 ^A S MA TTHE W PARKER CONSRCRA TED ? 

that would write hastily, or without consideration, on 
so important a subject, as Dr. Lingard charges, had no 
faith in the Larnoeth consecration; and with these 
names, and these authorities, may we not venture to 
hold an opinion concerning an historical fact contrary 
to that of Dr. Lingard, able and reliable though he be, 
as a Catholic historian, especially when, as Dr. Kenrick 
remarks: ''The arguments brought forward by him on 
this subject were derived from authorities, the authen- 
ticity of which had been long and publicly questioned, 
and he was urging the objections which Courayer had, 
more than a century ago, put forward, and which had 
been triumphantly refuted at the time by the learned 
Hardouin, and in the celebrated work of Father Le 
Quien." But enough, and more than enough, about 
the Nag's Head. We must hasten to conclude what we 
have to say on the Lambeth Register, and the conse- 
cration of Barlow, so as to come to what we regard as 
the point on which the whole question of the validity 
of Anglican and Episcopalian orde-rs hinge, viz.: tlie 
invalid form devised by Edward VL, including the 
probable absence of due intention in the consecrating 
would-be prelates. 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 73 



VI. 

THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 

AVING now sufficiently discussed the historical 
question of Parker's consecration, and shown 
that it was questioned and positively denied by re- 
spectable, learned, and distinguished writers and divines, 
and that from the year 1559 until 1613 the first bishops of 
the reformed Church had been repeatedly taunted with 
the Nag's Head story, without any attempt being made, 
for upwards of fifty years, to produce any documentary 
evidence of a regular consecration, or -a^ny public refer- 
ence to the Lambeth Register, we must now, as briefly 
as possible, examine the authenticity of this Register 
on which Anglicans mainly, if not entirely, rest their 
proof of Parker's consecration at Lambeth ; to whom, 
consequently, clearest evidence of its authenticity is 
of paramount importance. 

We must again, however, remind our readers that 
this is a historical question, not materially affecting 
the main issue of Anglican succession or Anglican 
orders, so that, whether, after a careful weighing of 
authorities and documentary evidence we regard the 
Register as authentic, or spurious, we must not, as 
Canon Raynal warns us. "attach undue importance to 
a mere historical fact, and overlook the main point of 
the controversy, viz. : the invalidity of the forms in- 



74 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



vented by Cranmer and inserted into the Rite, which 
is said to have been used at the consecration of Parker." 
Dr. Lingard and other Cathohc writers may declare 
*' they see no reason for pronouncing the Register a 
forgery," whilst disavowing any intention of deciding 
the question of the validity of the act, nay, expressly 
and openly flouting Anglican claims to valid orders or 
a legitimate episcopacy. For ourselves, we would not 
even stop to consider this point at all, were it not to 
convince certain writers that the charge of forgery is 
not a desperate artifice gotten up by Jesuits to- im- 
pugn the Anglican succession, and to show that, not- 
withstanding the '' proverbial purity of law and legal pro- 
cesses in England, and the care taken of public records 
and facts made historical in printed pages,, and thrown, 
open to the eyes and inquiries of the most intelligent and 
truth-loving nation of the world,'' the public records are 
not above suspicion, or to be accepted with unques- 
tioning t:redulity, that forgery was not uncommon, and 
that the Lambeth Register, if not a forgery, is at least 
a very suspicious document, and that, as Canon Est- 
court admits, '' there are grave doubts with regard to 
the authenticity of the Register itself, as an original 
and contemporaneous document, or record of the facts 
as they occurred." This Register, then publicly re- 
ferred to for the first time, in a work published in the 
year 1613, by Francis Mason, chaplain of Abbot, arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, testifies that Matthew Parker was 
consecrated on the 17th of December, 1559, by Barlow, 
Scorey, Coverdale and Hodgkins. It was at once de- 
nounced as a fabrication by Catholic writers, Fitz- 
herbert, ''a man of great learning and holy life," hear- 
ing v/ith astonishment that one Mr. Mason was at- 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



7S 



tempting to prove the consecration of the first Protest- 
ant bishops in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by a 
register testifying that four bishops consecrated Mr- 
Parker, writes : '' This is not a new quarrel, lately 
raised, but vehemently urged, divers times heretofore, 
by Catholics many years ago, yea, in the very begin- 
ning of the queen's reign, as namely, by the learned 
Doctors Harding and Stapleton, against Mr. Jewel and 
Mr. Horn, urging them to show how and by whom 
they were made bishops." And he continues : ^' What 
trow ye was ansv/ered thereto ? Were there any bishops 
named who consecrated them ? Were there any wit- 
nesses alleged of their consecration ? Was Mr. Mason's 
register, or any authentic document, produced either 
by Jewel. or Horn?" 

Kellison, with a like feeling of wonderment at the in- 
explicable silence of the Protestant clergy, during 
more than half a century, during which they were re- 
peatedly and tauntingly told that their bishops, 
Parker, Horn, etc., had not been consecrated, thus ex- 
pressed himself: ''Eut as for your registers, I know 
not whence you have exhumed them ; they are at 
least on many accounts suspected by us. For, first, 
when in the beginning of the new Church of England, 
It was objected that these ministers and bishops were 
neither truly nor lawfully ordained, they would have 
easily silenced them (those objecting), and yet they 
dared not bring forward those acts or refer to them. 
This much increases our suspicion that they were so 
late produced after having remained hid so long ; al- 
though they had been so often called for by our doc- 
tors." With the learned and critical author of " An- 
glican Ordinations," from whom we have borrowed the 



76 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



above extracts, slightly abbreviated, we repeat: 
*' Whatever explanation may be given of the non-pro- 
duction of the Register before the year 1613, it is evident 
that the fact is calculated to awaken suspicion ; and, 
therefore, those Catholic divines who called its authen- 
ticity into question, may have been influenced by other 
motives than those assigned by their adversaries." 
''The authenticity of the Lambeth or Parker's Regis- 
ter," says Rev. Mr. Waterworth, in a note to his sixth 
historical lecture, " has been ever since the time of 
James I. matter of dispute. This is not the place to 
enter into any details on the question ; and I will 
merely add, that not having met with, or discovered, 
any solid reasons for denying its genuineness, I shall 
appeal to it in the text as a document, which, though 
I see no reason to believe it spurious, others may not 
choose to admit as evidence." To this his American 
editor appends the following note : 

" The author of these valuable Lectures, with that 
spirit of liberality which distinguishes his work, has 
followed, in the text, the view most favorable to the 
Anglican ordinations. His authorities will be found 
below. With every wish to be equally impartial, we 
confess that, to our mind, the authenticity of the 
Lambeth, or Parker's Register is more than suspicious 
—its fabrication is next to a certainty. To discuss the 
subject in a brief note is not our intention ; it would 
moreover be foreign from the character of these Lec- 
tures, intended, as they are, to be historical and not 
controversial. Viewing the question, then, merel}' as a 
debated point of history, the following are some of 
the heads of argument which have led us to the con- 
clus'-on that the Lambeth Register cannot be admitted 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



77 



as evidence of Parker's consecration, and that the 
AngHcan ordinations are null. 

*' 1st. The Anglican ordinations were contested from 
the very infancy of the established Church, and by 
several of the most distinguished of the Catholic 
writers that the i6th century produced. The very title 
of Mason's work, published in 1613, himself a Protes- 
tant, places this fact beyond a doubt. 

"2d. Fifty-tJiree years passed away between the sup- 
posed consecration of Parker, and the first public 
reference by Mason to the Lambeth Register. If the 
Register existed before, why were the Protestant 
clergy silent for half a century, amid the taunts of their 
Catholic adversaries — that these ministers and bishops, 
although mitred, were not truly nor lawfully ordained? 
This silence, considering the importance of the ques- 
tion, and the religious excitement of the times, is al- 
most conclusive evidence that no such register then, 
existed. 

" 3d. Had Parker been consecrated in the chapel at 
Lambeth, according to the form prescribed by the 
ritual of Edward VL, and as described in the Register 
itself, the affair must have been notorious. How then, 
again, shall we account for the repeated public denial, 
not only of the validity^ but of the. fact of his consecra- 
tion, by the earliest Catholic writers, and for the sus- 
picious silence of Protestants ? 

" 4th. It is- not true that the Protestants appealed to 
the Register, on the first publication by Sacrobosco. 
in 1603, of the story of Parker's consecration, etc., at 
the Nag's Head tavern. It was only ten years after- 
wards, in 161 3, that the world was informed of the 
existence of such a document. 



78 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 

'^ 5th. Had the Register been referred to before — had 
its existence been a matter of public notoriety, would 
six bishops, with Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, at 
theii- head, have thought it worth their time to assem- 
ble, for the purpose of showing it to a few Catholic 
priests, brought from their prisons to look at it ? and 
when from their prisons they asked for a second look at 
the Register, v/hy was it refused them ? Was it, indeed^ 
from fear they might destroy the document ? their 
manacles might have been easily tightened. To us 
this so-called "examination' is almost proot positive 
that the Register was a forgery. 

'* 6th, The wording of the record in the Register is 
suspicious, in as mxuch as it is different from that of all 
the entries that precede and follow it : its circumstan- 
tiality, so uncalled for in such documents, is scarcely 
less suspicious. 

" 7th. Mason was chaplain to the archbishop of Can- 
terbury ; as such, it was both in his power to falsify the 
records at Lambeth, and his interest to do so : two cir- 
cumstances, considering the temper of those times, 
which greatly invalidate his evidence ; especially w^hen 
such evidence was so long and so vainh' called for, be- 
fore, by the Catholic writers. 

'' Goodwin's work, De Praesutihis Anglieie. appeared 
first in English, in i6oi, and afterwards in Latin, in 1615. 
The first edition, published before the appearance of 
Mason's work, says not a word about Parker's conse- 
cration at Lambeth ; the second, published two years 
afterwards, repeats Mason's tale. Such being the 
case, it would be safer for Episcopalians to let 
Goodwin pass : his previous silence is again almost 
conclusive evidence that he knew nothing of the Lam- 



Tim LAMBETH REGISTER. yg 

beth Register, nor of Parkers pretended consecration. 

*' Camden s Annals also appeared in 1615, two years 
after Mason's work: to copy Mason was no difficult 
task, and was tte most likely course to please the court 
and his patron, James I. 

'' As for the work on the antiqiiities of the British 
Church, ascribed to Parker himself, it is in the same 
predicament, and has altogether too much the air of 
testimony "got up for the occasion," to outweigh 
'the serious objections, suspicions, etc., v/hich on every 
side beset the question of Anglican ordinations. • In- 
deed, the more we study this subject, the more decided 
is our conviction that the Lambeth Register of Parker's 
consecration will find its proper place among the mass 
of documents to which the Protestant historian, 
Whitaker, refers in tlie following candid, though pain- 
ful acknowledgement : ' Forgery — I blush for the 
honor of Protestantism, while I write it — seem.s to have 
been peculiar to the reformed.' *' 

This Protestant divine repeats the same more than 
once in his vindication of Mary, the murdered queen 
of Scots : " Forger}' appears to have been the peculiar 
disease of Protestantism," and asijain, "I look in vain 
for one of these accursed outrages of imposition among 
the disciples of Poperv." We h^<-^, moreover, to direct 
the attention of our friends Vv^ho extol with so much 
pride and apparent self-complacency the stai^nless and 
unimpeachable public reco7'ds of England, and the 
proverhiol purity of la-%v and legal processes of the most 
intelligent and truth-loving nation- of the ivorld. to the 
evidence furnished by a clause In a general p.^ardon 
granted by James L, in the first year of his reign, that 
public documents even in that model truth4odng 



So THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 

land, were not only liable to falsification, but that 
frequent forgeries and interpolations had been per- 
petrated in his own reign, and that .of his immediate 
predecessor: *' We also pardon, remit and release by 
these presents, to the aforesaid A. B., all and every 
offences and transgressions, by erasing and underlining 
of any rolls, records, briefs, warrants, recognitions or 
other documents of ours, or any of our predecessors, 
or progenitors whatsoever, in any court or courts of 
ours, or of any of our predecessors, or our progenitors, 
donfe or perpetrated before the aforesaid 20th day of 
March." But is it not playing on the ignorance or 
credulity of his readers, when a controversialist not 
only so boldly refers to the sacrosanct, untainted 
English records, but says that "any flaw in the titles 
and legislative rights of Anglican bishops, would un- 
doubtedly have been challenged by statesmen, on ac- 
count of the jealousy with which, for three centuries, 
every step in the Anglican communion was vvatched 
by active enemies?" thereby insinuating that no flaw 
was found, that the titles and legislative rights of the 
Parliament bishops were unchallenged, when he knows, 
and the fact is patent on the open page of history 
that at the commencement of the reign of Janies L. 
after the death of Elizabeth, the tradition of the or- 
dination made at the Nag's Head tavern in Cheapside, 
was loudly invoked by Catholics and Presbyterians, 

" The Presbyterians said that the pretended bishops 
were m.ere priests like themselves, having only been 
ordained by the imposition of Parker's hands, who him- 
self had received it from a simple priest, Scorey, at the 
tavern, and consequently if they had seats in Parlia- 
ment, the Presbyterians should not be excluded from 



THE LAMBE TH RE CIS TER. g i 

them." For the same reason the CathoHcs maintained 
that, "the episcopacy and priesthood had ceased in 
England." And he can hardly be ignorant, that among 
the pleas put forth by Bishop Bonner, of London, in 
answer to the indictment by Horn, for refusing the 
oath of the queen's supremacy, was the following: 
"That the said Mr. Robert Home, not being lawful 
bishop of Winchester, but an usurper, intruder and 
unlawful possessor thereof, for that, according to the 
laws of the Catholike Churche, and the statutes and 
ordinances of this realme, the said Mr. Robert Home 
was not elected, consecrated, etc." Which plea of 
Bonner, says Canon Estcourt, seems to have caused no 
little alarm and excitement among the Anglican party ; 
and Randolph wrote from Edinburgh to Cecil, March 
30th, 1 565 : '' The tale is, that Bonner in his defence at 
his arraignment said that there was never a lawful 
bishop in England, which so astonished a great number 
of the best learned, that yet they knew not what 
answer to give him ; and when it was determined he 
should have suffered, he is remitted to the place from 
whence he came, and no more said to him." '' Bonner's 
objections," says Rev. Mr. Waterworth, "were both 
statutable and canonical. He denied Horn's right to 
administer the oath, because Horn had been conse- 
crated by a form not legally established, and by a 
metropolitan who was himself no bishop. Ai^d this 
latter assertion he defended on these two grounds: 
first, Parker was consecrated by King Edward's ordinal ; 
and secondly, that Parker's consecrators were both 
legally and canonically disqualified from ol^ciating at 
that consecration, being deprived of their benefices." 
We call attention then, again, to the glaring reckless- 



82 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 

ness. of assertion, insincerity or ignorance, whichever 
it may be, manifested by those maintaining that *' no 
imaginable flaw could be found in the title of the 
Anglican bishops, that their rights as bishops were un- 
challenged, that the law requiring the consecration of 
bishops to be absolutely conformed to the Anglican 
Ordinal, and the fact that in perpetuating the Anglican 
succession, nothing was done in a corner, rendered the 
succession in the Church of England more demonstra- 
bly canonical and regular, in all particulars, than any 
other succession in Christendom." This is indeed 
amusing; and we cannot help applying to these writers 
what Dr. Champney says of Mr. Mason: "He doth 
well to be bold in affirming, for a good face sometimes 
helpeth out an ill game." 

But we are quite willing to take the Register from 
Mr. Mason's hands, and still maintain that it is not an 
original, trustworthy, truthful, contemporaneous record 
of Parker's consecration. For proof of this, we refer to 
Canon Estcourt's valuable treatise on " Anglican 
Ordinations," which we recommend particularly to 
those liable to be imposed on by our Buffalo defender 
of Anglican orders, or his implicitly trusted authorities, 
Courayer, Mason, Haddan and Lee. 

We now proceed to give a brief statement of the opin- 
ions of Catholic writers, who admit the consecration of 
Parker, by Barlow & Co., and the Register as genuine, if 
you will, thougli evidently not the original record, truth- 
fully detailing the transaction, but a document framed 
and cunningly devised for a purpose, to meet an exi- 
gency, to forestall anticipated difficulties, and answer 
Catholic objections. This short historical view may per- 
haps throw light on some of the most salient points of 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



83 



the controversy, and show how little comfort the de- 
fenders of Anglican orders can derive from the most 
favorable view of the question, and the most liberal 
interpretation of disputed records. The Princess 
Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen of England, Novem- 
ber 17th, 1558. January 14th was fixed for her corona- 
tion, but Heath, the archbishop of York, and all the 
Catholic bishops refused to crown her, or lend the 
sanction of their presence to the ceremony, "until 
with much ado they obtained the bishop of Carlisle 
(Oglethorpe), the inferior almost of all the rest, to do 
that ceremony." (Allen's answer to English justice.) 
In the same year, 1559, the first of Elizabeth, all the 
bishops of the realm in convocation declared, "The 
supreme power of feeding and governing the militant 
Church of Christ is given to Peter, the Apostle, and 
to his lawful successors in the See Apostolic, as unto 
the vicars of Christ" (Heylin) ; and all except Llandaff 
refused to take the oath of supremacy : " Only one 
bishop conformed himself to the queen's commands, 
and was continued in his olace, viz. : Anthony Kitchen, 
alias Dunstan, of Llandaff" (Fuller) ; and before the 
end of the same year they were all deprived. (Dodd.) 
Elizabeth and her advisers are not blind to the exigency 
of the occasion. A hierarchy obsequious to the queen 
and favorable to the new doctrines must be created. 
Matthew Parker, a priest, who had been chaplain to 
Anne Boleyn, the queen's mother, and was on terms 
of intimacy with her chief advisers, Cecil and Bacon, 
and who — notwithstanding his priestly vow of celibacy, 
in violation of the law of God and of the realm, 
"that priests, after the order of priesthood, as afore, 
may not marry, by law of God" (31 Hen. viii. cap. 14), 



84 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 

and before the act (2 and 3 Ed. vi. c. 21) legalizing the 
marriage of the clergy — had taken to himself a wife, 
was selected by Elizabeth to be her first bishop. The 
vacant archiepiscopal see of Canterbury was offered to 
him, and a peremptoiy order from the queen decided 
his acceptance of the proffered, but not coveted dig- 
nity, and brought him to London in the beginning of 
June, 1559. Although cathedral chapters had been 
deprived in the reign of Edward VI. of the right to 
elect their bishops, and the right of appointment of 
the same had been vested exclusively in the king, 
" from henceforth no conge d'elirc, shall be granted, 
nor election of any archbishop or bishop by the dean or 
chapter made" (i Ed. vi. c. 2), a conge d'elire, is said 
to have been issued to the chapter of Canterbury, 
July 1 8th, of the same year. There was one vacancy 
in the chapter, and of the eleven prebendaries, only 
four, with Dean Nicholas Walton, answered the citation 
and put in an appearance. The election was by way 
of compromise left with the dean, whose choice, as 
was fully understood, was the choice or nominee of the 
queen. — 

This smg\i\'a.Y conge d' elire and election by the chapter 
were deemed sufficient for Parker to assume the epis- 
copal style and title, which he does in a letter to the 
council, dated August 27th, 1559. From this date until 
the 17th of December, the date assigned in the Register 
for his consecration, there is great confusion and even 
contradiction in the official documents. In some, the 
full title of bishop is given to him, in others he is des- 
ignated bishop " elect." A commission dated October 
20th, is addressed to Parker, Grindal and Coxe with their 
full titles as bishops, and on the 26th of the same 



THE LA MBE 1 'H RE CIS TER. 85 

month, October, we find among the State papers an 
official document issued by the queen, asserting that, 
''The archbishop elect of Canterbury, and the other 
elect bishops of London, Ely, Hereford and Chichester 
remain unconsecrated." If any weight is attached to 
this document, then Scorey and Barlow, the elect of 
Hereford and Chichester, are on 26th of Ooctober, 1559, 
unconsecrated. Yet we know that Barlow was bishop 
elect of St. Asaph's and St. David's in Henry's reign, 
and afterwards of Bath and Wells, though there is 
strone reason to doubt that he was ever consecrated, 
as we shall see in the sequel, and Scorey was conse- 
crated by Cranmer according to King Edward's Ordinal, 
and unlawfully thrust into the see of Chichester, from 
which Bishop Day had been deposed, because he re- 
fused to exchange the altar for the communion table, 
the sacrifice of the Mass, for the Lord's Supper. If it 
be by mistake that Parker gets at one time his full 
title of bishop, and afterwards is styled archbishop 
"elect," and declared to be unconsecrated, and if, as 
Canon Estcourt is willing to allow, it be by a clerical 
error that Scorey, whose register of consecration is ex- 
tant, is put on the same footing with Parker, Grindal 
and Coxe, who are certainly unconsecrated, and Barlow, 
of whose consecration there is great reason to doubt, 
we at least are justified in concluding that the public 
records of England were not so carefully kept, and so 
trustworthy, as some would have us believe. But to 
proceed. 

The so-called election of Parker by Dean Walton 
occurred on the ist of August, and "on the 9th of 
September, the great seal was put to a warrant iox his 
consecration, directed to the bishops of Duresme 



S6 THE LA MBE TH RE CIS TER. 

(Tonstall), Bath and Wells (Bourne), Peterborough 
(Pole), Llandaff (Kitchen), and to Barlow and Scorey 
(styled only bishops, not being then elected to any 
sees), requiring them to consecrate him." (Bennet.) 
This commission failed, most probably because the 
Catholic prelates, " who," as Sir Mackintosh in his " His- 
tory ot England" owns, '* must have considered such an 
act a profanation, conscientiously refused ;" just as the 
Catholic prebendaries of the chapter of Canterbury 
had refused to take part in his election. We are cer- 
tainly justified in believing Mackintosh, that the 
Catholic prelates refused, through conscientious 
motives, to unite with such men as Barlow and Scorey, 
apostates from the faith and their religious vows, in 
consecrating Parker, who himself had broken his priestly 
vow of celibacy, and joined the so-called reformed 
party, and who, irregularly elected, at the bidding of 
the queen, had been forced into the episcopal dignity 
by the civil ruler, and secular power, in contravention 
of canon law, in defiance of all the spiritual authority 
and ecclesiastical powers, as well of the universal 
Church, as of the Church of England ; had been 
named a bishop despite the Pope, despite the patriarch, 
despite the metropolitan, despite all the laws and tra- 
ditions of the Church hitherto held sacred. Our be- 
lief is strengthened v/hen we find three of these 
four Catholic prelates suffering the penalty of their 
non-compliance with the royal wishes in the depriva- 
tion of their sees — Tonstall before the i6th of the 
same month of September, Pole before the nth of 
November, and Boume, on his refusal to take the oath, 
tendered by a commission issued October i8th. 

Yet, a hierarchy must be created for the royal foun- 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. %j 

dation, the new or reformed Church ; Elizabeth must 
have bishops, Parker must be consecrated. The bish- 
ops refuse to consecrate him, and they are all, save 
one, in consequence deprived of their sees. The law 
requires (25 Henry, viii.) for the confirmation and con- 
secration of an archbishop, another archbishop, or four 
bishops within the kings dominions. Now, there is no 
archbishop, and only one bishop, who answers the de- 
scription of a bishop within the realm. Cecil, the chief 
adviser of the queen, is sorely puzzled, and in a mar- 
ginal note in his own handwriting- to a state paper de- 
tailing the legal steps to be taken for Parker's conse- 
cration, he states: "There is no archbishop nor IlII. 
bishops now to be had. Whereupon, Querendum." Ac- 
cordingly eminent canonists, four clergymen, and two 
civilians are consulted, and in accordance with their 
advice a second commission is issued, dated December 
6th, " to the bishop of Llandaff ; Barlow, bishop elect 
of Chichester ; Scorey, bishop elect of Hereford ; Cover- 
dale, late bishop of Exeter. Hodgkins, bishop suffragan 
of Bedford ; John, suffragan of Witford ; and Bale, 
bishop of Ossory ; that they, or any four of them, 
should consecrate him." We may well repeat with the 
historian Mackintosh : " Whoever considers it import- 
ant to examine the above list, will perceive the per- 
plexities in which the English Church was involved by 
a zeal to preserve unbroken the chain of Apostolical 
succession." That the perplexities were grave, indeed, 
may be inferred not only from the inspection of the 
names and doubtful character of those mentioned m 
the commission, but also from the unusual and very 
strange clause inserted by these canonists, in this com- 
mission, with which they asserted, it could be lawfully 



88 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 

acted on. By this clause the queen, by her supreme 
authority, dispenses with all disabilities, and supplies 
all irregularities and deficiencies in any of the persons 
to whom it is addressed, arising from *' their condition, 
state or powers, from the. laws of the Church, or the 
statutes of the realmi, the urgency of the time and the 
necessity of circumstances requiring it." Here indeed 
is a stretch of the royal supremacy and spiritual pre- 
rogatives of the crown, but the exigency of the time de- 
manded it. Parker must be consecrated ; a new re- 
formed hierarchy must be created ; even though the 
parties had no canonical rights, jurisdiction or faculties 
to consecrate a bishop, Elizabeth surely can and does 
supply the want ; though they may not possess the 
condition of bishops within the realm required by the 
law, the queen can dispense with that, nay, even if not 
bishops at all, the royal prerogative can supply the 
want of the episcopal character and ecclesiastical state ; 
in fine, no laws of the Church or statutes of the realm 
must be a bar to the execution of the wishes of the 
queen, to the establishment of an Anglican episcopate, to 
the consecration of Parker, and the last forlorn hope 
is ordered out at this most critical juncture to save the 
imperilled hierarchy of the Anglican establishment. 
Yet strange, though thus armed and fortified by these 
extraordinary royal powers, Kitchen, the only bishop 
exercising jurisdiction and answering to the description 
of a bishop within the queen's realms, and Bale of 
Ossory, and the suffragan Telford, " either hindered 
by sickness," says the Protestant historian Heylin, ''or 
by some other lawful impediment, were not in a con- 
dition to attend the service." 

Verily, perplexing difficulties thicken around poor 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



89 



Parker's path to the episcopacy, unlooked-for obstacles 
obstruct his way to Canterbury. The Fates, it would 
seem, oppose his elevation to a see rendered illustri- 
ous by a line of saintly prelates. However, she " of 
the iron hand and iron maw" is not to be foiled ; she 
has made up her mind to establish prelacy ; that the 
Church of England as by law, by queen and Parliament 
established, may have prelates, her iron will is deter- 
mined to place Parker in the see of Canterbury, and 
through him fill the other sees, which her despotic will 
had made vacant. As Kitchen a second time refused 
to become accessory to the crime and sacrilege of con- 
secrating a bishop without canonical warrant or ec- 
clesiastical authority. Barlow, the next mentioned on 
the commission, with his worthy compeers, Scorey, 
Coverdale and Hodgkins, are said to have assembled 
at the church of St. Mary-le-bone on the 9th of De- 
cember, to confirm Parker's election, and on Sunday, 
17th December, in the chapel of Lambeth house, to have 
gone through the ceremony of his consecration accord- 
ing to the ordinal of Edward VI., the service begin- 
ning "about five or six o'clock in the morning." This 
is the testimony of the Register, and as to its authen^ 
ticity and the collateral proofs and authorities adduced 
in its support, we need say no more, though, as Mr. 
Waterworth remarks-: "they appeared about the time 
that the forgery of documents is said to have been so 
prevalent as to be made a source of fiscal gain. = Pardons 
were issued at a small charge and ran thus : ' Perdon- 
amus falsas fabricationes chartaruvi, scriptorum inon- 
tunentoriun, ac piiblicationes cornni! " Tho'ugh, then, 
with the American editor of Waterworth's lectures, we 
feel it to be "certainly somewhat perplexing, that the 



90 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



commission dated December 6th, 1559, in consequence 
of which the consecration of December 17th took place, 
should have no mark by which Rymer could distin- 
guish it from a spurious document," we must again 
remind our readers that this is a subject which they 
must examine and decide for themselves on its own 
merits, and the documentary evidence adduced. Canon 
Estcourt hesitates not to say : " We may indeed believe 
the alleged facts — viz., of the ceremony having taken 
place at Lambeth on the 17th of December; of Parker 
and the other persons named having taken their 
several parts in it, and of the Rite in the book of 1552 
having been followed, except in one particular — to be 
as certain as any other facts in English history. But 
this belief, will not lead us to accept the existing 
Register as an authentic and contemporaneous record 
of the facts as they occurred. On the contrary, there 
are circumstances of considerable suspicion attached 
to it." Again he says: " The other copies which are 
constantly referred to as evidence in support of the 
Register, so far from adding to its credit, rather de- 
tract from it." He then points out the discrepancies 
between the Register and the two principal documents, 
usually styled copies or transcripts of the Register, 
but which are rather original drafts, viz., that of the 
State Paper Office, and that kept in Corpus Christi 
College, Cambridge, and which is said have been given 
to the college by Parker himself. The learned canon 
proves that " the Register as it stands is a remark- 
able departure from the usual form," and whilst at- 
testing that Edward's ordinal was used, records an im- 
portant deviation from its prescription. 

He refers to an important document among Foxe's 



THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 



91 



MSS. in the British Museum, and placing it side by 
side in parallel columns with Parker's Register, as.serts : 
''This MS. to be in the writing of a contemporary, and 
not an unfriendly hand, and preserved among contem- 
porary papers, of which a part is taken exactly from 
the Register as it stands, and another part is widely 
different." How he accounts for this difference we 
shall see presently, when we speak of Barlow, whom it 
seems the early Anglicans were ashamed to acknowl- 
'edge as the consecrator of their first archbishop, the root 
and stem of the Anglican hierarchy. In fact, as we 
said before, it is very doubtful that Barlow himself was 
ever consecrated, was ever anything more than bishop 
" elect," and even if the defender of Anglican succession 
could have an absolute certainty — which after what we 
have said he cannot have — of Parker's consecration and 
of the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Lambeth 
Register, the validity of the consecration would still be 
doubtful. 



p2 • J'f^AS BARLOW EVER CONSECRATED BISHOP? 



VII. 

WAS BARLOW EVER CONSECRATED BISHOP? 

TO be certain of the validity of Parker's consecra-. 
tion, we must have an absolute certainty of Bar- 
low's episcopal character. We propose now to show 
that his friends have not cleared up the doubts thrown 
around Barlow's consecration, and that no positive, con- 
clusive proofs thereof can be adduced. "All are 
agreed," says Dr. Kenrick, "that Barlow's consecration 
cannot be established hy positive evidence, and may, at 
most, be inferred from the circumstances of his history. 
In other words, the fact is not certain ; but according 
to the most sanguine advocates of English orders 
JiigJdy probable^ We asserted in our lecture, " Even 
if the Lambeth Register be genuine, and if the conse- 
cration took place, as asserted, at the hands of Barlow, 
an apostate monk, it is very doubtful whether Barlow 
himself was ever consecrated, or ever an}-thing more 
than a bishop elect." In reply to which Dr. Lingard is 
cited as testifying the direct reverse, thus: " Is there 
any positive proof that he (Barlow) was no bishop? 
None in the world. Why should we doubt the conse- 
cration of Barlow and not that of Gapdiner? I fear 
that tJie only reason is this: Gardiner did not conse- 
crate Parker, but Barlow did." This is put down as 
directly tJic rcTcrsc of what we affirmed, yet we never 
asserted or pretended that there was Tiny positive proof 



WAS BARLOW E VER CONSE CRA TED BISHOP ? g^ 

that he was no bishop. What we asserted, and re-assert 
is, that there is no positive proof that he was a bishop, 
or anything more than a bishop elect. This is all that 
is necessary for our thesis, that his consecration is 
doubtful ; doubtful, then, too, is the validity of Parker's 
consecration, and consequently, there can be no abso- 
lute certainty of the transmission, not only of legiti- 
mate succession, but even of valid orders through the 
Anglican episcopate, or the bishops of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of the United States. It is then not 
only rash, but a mockery of truth, and an insult to an 
intelligent public to aver and publish that, " Succes- 
sion in the Church of England is more demonstrably 
canonical and regular, in all particulars, than any other 
succession in Christendom," and — we reluctantly re- 
peat what must grate so harshly on Christian ears — 
''the canon of Scripture rests on no evidence more 
explicit." This putting of the succession in the 
Church of England on the same footing with holy 
Scripture, or comparing and identifying the evidence 
on which both rest, strikes us as grossly irreverent to 
God's Holy Word, and as an unintentional indeed, but 
most unkind and dangerous thrust at the authenticity, 
and unimpeachable, absolutely certain, and infallible 
authority of the inspired Scriptures. We are quite 
willing to accept the following test of legitimate suc- 
cession and share in the corporate witness, and apply- 
ing it to Barlow and Parker we find them wanting. 
''In any given case," says our Episcopalian divine, "a 
bishop must be able to prove his own succession by 
the highest moral evidence. In doing this he must 
show that his consecrators derived their episcopal order 
from some ancient Apostolic line. If he can do this 



g^ WA S BA RL OWE VER CONSE CRA TED BISH OP ? 

by undoubted registers, known and read of all men 
like other legal documents, by which the succession is 
carried up to a period antecedent to modern contro- 
versy," etc. 

Now, let Barlow or Parker prove by undoubted 
registers, known and read of all men, that his consecra- 
tors derived their episcopal order from some ancient 
Apostolic line. We challenge our Buffalo divine to apply 
this test in Barlow's case. He knows well that this would 
be fatal to Barlow's claims to a share in the corporate 
witness or the episcopal character, and yet he attempts 
to throw dust in the eyes of the public by boldly set- 
ting forth what every Catholic would acknowledge as 
full and ample evidence of a legitimate title, and thus 
unfairly insinuating, without a shadow of proof, that 
the title of the first archbishop and his consecrator 
rests on such evidence. Again, Dr. Lingard asks : 
'' Why should we doubt the consecration of Barlow 
and not of Gardiner?" We answer, first, because 
Gardiner's consecration was never questioned, whereas 
that of Barlow was openly doubted, and denied ; and 
secondly, because in Gardiner's case, and in every 
other case, but Barlow's, where the register of a dio- 
cesan bishop is wanting, collateral evidence of the 
consecration is supplied, as Professor Stubs shows in 
his " Registrum A.nglicanum," from the diocesan 
registers, from Rymer, or elsewhere. But in Barlow's 
case, there is no such collateral evidence, either from 
diocesan record, from the calendars of the Church 
books in which the dates of the entrance and death of 
successive bishops were kept, or from chapter books, 
for none of these, strange as it may seem, are to be 
found at St. David's. Dr. Lingard says again, '' I fear 



JVAS BAA'LOIV EVER CONSECRA TED BISHOP? 



95 



that the only reason (for denying Barlow's and not 
Gardiner's consecration) is this : Gardiner did not 
consecrate Parker, but Barlow did." This is no doubt 
partially true, for whether Gardiner or Cardinal Pole, 
or " the other bishops," as Dr. Kenrick justly remarks^ 
" whose record of consecration no longer appears, 
were, or were not, consecrated is a matter of compara- 
tively minor importance ; but it is of most serious im- 
portance for the Anglicans to establish, by positive 
proof, that the man through whom they claim orders, 
had himself received them." It is no doubt, then, true 
that Catholics weighed and examined so carefully the 
question of Barlow's consecration, and not finding suffi- 
cient vouchers or positive proofs thereof, denied the 
same, because on Barlow, as Mr. Ward declares, '' must 
be built as on a foundation, the whole episcopacy and 
priesthood of the Church of England." Our Buffalo 
divine will of course demur to this, for he says : " It 
must be remembered that it is of no real consequence 
whether Barlow was or was not a bishop, as he was 
only one of four bishops, who laid hands, all pronounc- 
ing together the formula of ordination." Of the 
worth and theological soundness of this opinion we 
will speak hereafter, but we really do not blame Angli- 
cans for being reluctant to own Barlow as the father 
of their hierarchy, or the laying on of his soiled hands 
the means of communicating the ecclesiastical spirit 
and Apostolical commission to their Church. '' Of all 
the bishops," says an Anglican writer, ^' who were 
created from the date of 1533 to the end of Edward 
VI. 's reign. Barlow is perhaps entitled to the palm 
for abject servility. He seems to have been a mere 
weathercock, changing perpetually. He was retained 



q6 ^^ 'S- BA RL IV K VER CON SEC R A TED BISHOP ? 

in the service of Anne Boleyn as early as 1530, and was 
soon employed as an agent whom she, the king, and 
Cromwell, might be sure of to do their pleasure. He 
had de facto contracted a marriage in spite of his pro- 
fessiu.i as a religious." On the accession of Queen 
Mary he made a submission which was equivalent to a 
recantation, resigned his see, or was deprived, and fled 
into Germany. His sentiments regarding the neces- 
sity of episcopal consecration we have already recited. 
but not only on this subject were his sentiments lax 
and his expressions profane, but he was regarded by 
his contemporaries as a clerical buffoon and scoffer at 
holy things. Returning to England on Elizabeth's 
accession he was by her named to the see of 
Chichester. 

It was whilst thus only bishop elect of Chichester, 
without any jurisdiction, he is said to have consecrated 
Parker on the 17th of December, and on the very next 
day he himself is confirmed and obtains episcopal 
jurisdiction from the hands of his grateful, new-born 
child, Matthew Parker, the episcopal fledgling of a day 
old, whom he presented the day before to Elizabeth 
and the English Church as the first fruit of the queen's 
supremacy, the first begotten of a new race of bishops, 
the first link of a new chain of corporate witnesses. 
Verily," the succession in the Church of Englarid is the 
most demonstrably canonical and regular in all CJiristen- 
dom ! Still his own personal un worthiness, moral deg- 
radation, uncanonical conduct, and lack of jurisdiction 
would not invalidate, though they would render illegiti- 
mate and irregular his conferring of orders, if he were 
himself a validly consecrated bishop, and with a proper 
intention used a valid form. Was then Barlow a con- 



IFA S BA RL OW E VER CONSE CRA TED BISHOP ? gy 

secrated bishop? Buffalo's divine says he was : " Bar- 
low was consecrated bishop of St. David's in the 28th 
year of Henry VIII." But would not the gentleman 
be kind enough to give us the date more precisely, the 
day and the month ■? It would save us a world of trouble 
searching through historic records and dusty folios ; be- 
sides it would be so satisfactory and withal so con- 
vincing. Would he not, too, condescend to tell us 
where he was consecrated, and who were his consecrat- 
ors? these are the tests which he himself — waiving, of 
course, the undoubted registers, which cannot be had 
— demands of every bishop in order to prove his epis- 
copal character. But no, he will deign no reply ; 
but simply affirms Barlow was consecrated in the 28th 
year of Henry VIII. That must suffice ; his ipse dixit 
settles the question. As, then, he will not condescend 
to gratify our now awakened curiosity, or try to satisfy 
incredulous and inquiring minds, we must turn to 
others, we must prosecute our inquiries regarding 
Barlow's consecration elsewhere, in the pages of English 
history, and in doing so, we find that we have to tread 
our Avay through a mass of conflicting authorities and 
contradictory statements. 

At the outset we find that Courayer, the most earnest 
advocate of the validity of English orders, contradicts 
our friend, for he says. Barlow was confirmed by 
proxy, bishop of St. Asaph, on the 23rd of February, 
1535, and most probably consecrated in the country, by 
virtue of the archbishop's commission : '' We know for 
certain that he was confirmed, and as it is reasonable to 
suppose, also consecrated, yet nothing further appears 
with regard to the see of St. Asaph." This again is 
contradicted by a royal act, dated May 29th, 1536,, 



gS ^'^'-i -S" BA RL IV £ VER CONSE CRA 1 ED BISH OP ? 

allowing the chapter of St. Asaph to proceed to fill 
the see made vacant, " by the voluntary exchange of 
William Barlow, the last bishop elect of that place." 
This also is confirmed by a document found in an 
appendix to Courayer, in which it is said that, " Barlow 
was one of the only three bishops translated to new 
sees within the last two hundred years, without having 
been consecrated for those to which they were first . 
elected." According to Godwin, he was consecrated on 
the 22d of February, 1535, whilst Wharton, in his 
" F'asti Ecclesia^ Anglicanse," places his confirmation, 
^^■hich naturally precedes consecration, on the 23d of 
February, 1535. A mandate of King Henry to Cran- 
mer, dated 22d of February, 1636, empowers him to 
proceed to the consecration of Barlow, though accord- 
ing to Strype, he was confirmed the 15th of Septem- 
ber, 1535, and of course the ceremony of confirmation 
could not take place until the royal mandate for his 
consecration had been issued. "All these contradic- 
tions," as Dr. Kenrick, from whom we have condensed 
these facts, remarks, " are evidence that nothing cer- 
tain is known of the period of Barlow's consecration." 
Canon Estcourt, from data furnished mainly by Mr. 
Haddon, makes it, if not certain, at least most prob- 
able, that Barlow resigned the see of St. Asaph be- 
fore he was consecrated, and was elected bishop of St. 
David's on the loth of April, 1535-6, and took posses- 
sion of that see in person on the ist of May. He also 
shows from authentic original documents that he was 
styled on the 12th of June, " the bishop elect of St. 
Asaph, now elect of St. Davyes," and on the 30th, in 
pursuance of a writ of summons issued on the 27th of 
April, in. consequence of an exceptional and extraor- 



JVA S BA RL ly E I 'ER CONSECRA TED BISHOP ? qq 

dinary grant of the custody of temporalities made to 
him, not to "the said elect and confirmed," the usual 
form, but to " the same now bishop for his life," he as- 
sumed the style and title of bishop, and took his seat 
in the House of Lords. Referring our readers, who 
may wish to study this question more thoroughly, to 
Canon Estcourt's most valuable work on, ''Anglican 
Ordinations^'' we will now with the learned canon sum 
up Barlow's case. "All the a priori arguments used by 
Bramhall and Elrington, such as the prccmiinire, the 
grant of temporalities, the seat in the House of Lords, 
are shown to be either groundless or contrary to the fact ; 
all the dates assigned for his consecration, viz., the 
22d of February by Godwin, the 23d of April by 
Dr. Lee, and the i ith of June by Mr. Haddon, are con- 
tradicted b\' the testimony of records — and the whole 
time left for him to be consecrated in is reduced to a 
period of nineteen days, viz., between the 12th and 
30th of June, exclusive. 

The author shows that Mason gave a wrong refer- 
ence to the record attesting the extraordinary grant 
of temporalities, and this fact does not enhance our 
opinion of Mason's honesty nor increase our confidence 
in registers, which it would be to his interest to tam- 
per with and falsify. "An error in the reference would 
be of little consequence if he had given a correct de- 
scrTption of the document, or if he printed it so as to 
show its real nature and operation, instead of passing 
it of! as the restitution usually made to a bishop after 
consecration, and printing only so much as vv'ould not 
betray the deception he was practising." \\\ the docu- 
ment found among Foxe's MSS., and referred to above 
we discover a note concerning Barlow, Scorey, and 



1 00 ^^^ S BARLO W E VER COiVSE CRA TED BISH OP ? 

Coverdale, which seems greatly to strengthen the opin- 
ion that Barlow was never consecrated. The writer, 
evidently in the confidence of the Reformers, writ- 
ing in their favor, having access to registers, though 
he states when and by whom the other two were 
consecrated, is as dry and indefinite about Barlow 
as his Buffalo defender himself, merely stating, 
'■'■ William Barlow was consecrated in the time of 
Henry VIII." May we not reasonably conclude that 
he was unable to tell the date of the consecration, or 
the names of the bishops who consecrated him? We 
are, then, surely justified in the conclusion that, al- 
though we cannot establish with absolute certainty 
and by positive evidence, that Barlow was never con- 
secrated, the probabilities are against him, and "with 
so many circumstances of suspicion, arising from dif- 
ferent quarters, yet pointing the same way, it is impos- 
sible to admit the fact of his consecration without more 
direct proof of it." It is then and must remain very 
doubtful that Barlow was anything more than a bishop 
elect. Anglicans and Episcopalians can never be 
certain of their orders, not to speak of succession, un- 
less they can have an absolute certainty of Barlow's 
consecration, and yet it is boldly af^firmed that the 
"canon of Scripture rests on no evidence more ex- 
plicit." 



BARLOW'S DOUBl 'F UL CONSE CRA TION. i q i 



VIII. 

FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO BOLSTER UP OR SUPPLY FOR 
barlow's DEFICIENT OR DOUBTFUL CONSECRATION. 

WE will now examine what we must regard as a 
mere subterfuge, a last and very poor shift to 
escape the consequences of the very grave doubts con- 
cerning Barlow's episcopal character. '' It must be 
remembered," says the Buffalo defender of Anglican 
succession, '' that it is of no real consequence, 
whether Barlow was or was not a bishop, as he was 
only one of four bishops, who laid hands, all pro- 
nouncing together the formula of consecration." In 
this he follows the lead of such Anglican writers as 
Mason and Bramhall, who taking it from the Register 
that all four imposed their hands and said the words 
of the Rite together, argue that all four were really 
consecrators, and, tfierefore, it would be sufficient if 
only one of the four had been a bishop. Mr. Haddon, 
too, declares that Barlow presided at Parker's conse- 
cration, but the position occupied by him does not 
answer to that of the consecrating bishop, for all 
joined throughout and equally, both in the imposition 
of hands and the words. All this we learn from 
Canon Estcourt, and it will, we think, be evident to 
any one who weighs carefully and without prejudice, 
all the documents and authorities he adduces, that 



I02 FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR 

'* the Anglican party finding out what a mistake they 
had made in allowing Barlow to act as consecrator," 
tampered with the Register, " had it v/holly or partially 
rewritten so as to gloss over Barlow's being the prin- 
cipal in the functron," with a view of meeting the 
damaging charges of laxity of faith and morals made 
by Catholics against Barlow himself, and the doubts 
and difficulties about his consecration. As we have 
already remarked, in this Register produced by Mason, 
there is a remarkable departure from the usual form. 
In ail other instances, the Register records the name, 
either of the archbishop or of some bishop commis- 
sioned by him, as taking the principal part, and two 
other bishops assisting him, but in Parker's case the 
Register makes no mention of a consecrating bishop and 
assistants, stating simply that all four imposed hands, 
and said the words of the form, without saying that 
they, or any one of them, consecrated him, or that he 
was consecrated by them, and Mr. Haddon himself re- 
marks ''that in other cases a distinction is made 
between the consecrating and assisting bishops, which 
is not made here." This exceptional form of registra- 
tion and singular deviation from the customary style 
of records, coupled with the fact that in the MSS. al- 
ready referred to, and found in the British Museum, 
Barlow is expressly named as consecrator, and the 
others as assistants, show that if Parker's Register be 
not an entire forgery, the original record has been falsi- 
fied, tampered with, for a purpose. That purpose we 
can easily conjecture from the labored attempts to sus- 
tain the opinion which Mr. Haddon thus expresses : 
" The absence of Barlow's consecration, if it were so, 
would not invalidate that of Parker." An extreme 



.BARLOW'S DO UB TF UL CONSE CRA TION. 



103 



and hazardous opinion, indeed, but drowning men 
catch at straws, and the Anglicans seem ready to em- 
brace any opinion or broach any theory that may save 
them from the alternative of resting their orders and 
hierarchy on the doubly doubtful Barlow. 

But supposing the opinion tenable, that all four were 
consecrators, and that even if Barlow, the presiding prel- 
ate, were not a consecrated bishop, had no episcopal 
character, Parker would still be validly consecrated, 
because the three others joined with Barlow in impos- 
ing hands and reciting the form ; who are these others 
on v/hom we are forced to fall back? Scorey, Coverdale 
and Hodgkins. Scorey and Coverdale were consecrated 
by the form devised by Edvv^ard VI., but that form is 
notoriously invalid and insufificient, as we shall see pres- 
ently, and therefore they were not bishops at all, and 
consequently will not help Anglicanism out of the 
dilemma into which Barlow has brought it. Its last re- 
sort and only dependence are now on Hodgkins, the 
suffragan of Bedford. But so poor is this dependence, 
so weak and rickety this last prop, that Dr. Elrington 
himself admits that, " if Ward could prove that Scorey 
and Coverdale (in addition to Barlow) were not iridy 
bishops it would then follow that Parker was not a 
bishops and the succession of the English clergy would 
be destroyed." Yet Hodgkins, though only a suffragan 
and without jurisdiction, was a real bishop, having been 
validly consecrated, with a valid Catholic form, by 
Stokesly, bishop' 6f London, in 1537, and hence, if the 
Register can be relied on as detailing the real facts as 
they occurred, and the opinion of certain Anglican 
writers such as Mason, that all four were equally con- 
secrators, and that it would be sufficient if only one of 



I04 



FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR 



them were a bishop, can be maintained, Parker may 
still be a bishop, though Barlow most probatbly, and 
Scorey and Coverdale certainly, were not. VVe are, 
however, inclined to think that any one who will take 
the pains to examine this question, and study the con- 
temporaneous documents now within reach, will come 
to the conclusion that this presenting of all four as 
equally and individually consecrators is an after- 
thought, and that Barlow and the others using Edward's 
ordinal followed its prescriptions, and did not devise 
something new and exceptional. Now Edward's or- 
dinal and the rubric of the Pontifical, and the invariable 
and immemorial usage in England, as is evident from 
every register extant, except Parker's, suppose and pre- 
scribe that there shall be one consecrating bishop, and 
two assistants. Hodgkins was then most probably pres- 
ent, but took no part in the ceremony, just as now, 
and at all times in the Catholic Church, prelates come 
by their presence to add solemnity and rc/<7^ to the con- 
secration of a brother bishop, but only the ofiflciating 
prelate, who really consecrates, and the two assistants, 
take any active part in the ceremony, so that we think 
Dr. Elrington was quite right in saying, that if Scorey 
and Coverdale, in addition to Barlow, were no bishops, 
then Parker was not a bishop. 

Now as to the theological soundness of the opinion 
that all are equally consecrators, certain Catholic theo- 
logians are quoted as maintaining that the bishops 
present are not only witnesses, but co-operators. ^''Oinncs 
qui adsiuit cpiscopi non tantuin testes, sed etiavi co-opera- 
tores esse citra omnem dubitationis aleavi asserendum est J" 
(Martene.) This by no means implies that they con- 
secrate either separately from him or equally with him. 



BARLOW'S DOUBTFUL CONSE CRA TLON. 



105 



but that they assist and co-operate with the conse- 
crator, and invariably in the rubrics one is called the 
consecrator^ the others, assistants. The consecrator is 
spoken of as effecting and completing the whole conse- 
cration, the others as "aiding," "co-operating," "giving 
testimony and approval." Numerous grave authori- 
ties and learned theological writers might be adduced, 
asserting with Filliucius, " Although there are three 
who consecrate,, one of them alone completes the con- 
secration, even though the others pronounce the words, 
for of one sacrament there is but one minister." We 
are quite willing to coincide with the very modest and 
moderate views of Canon Estcourt : " Without ventur- 
ing to express an opinion on either side of these dis- 
puted points — that is to say, whether the assistant 
bishops are only * testes,' or also ' co-operatores! and if 
co-operatores in what sense they co-operate ; or whether 
the consecrator alone is the minister of the sacrament, 
and alone completes the consecration, or whether the 
others are joint consecrators with him, or whether it 
could be maintained, that all the bishops present are 
equally and separately and individually consecrators, 
— it is obvious that in a point touching the administra- 
tion of a sacrament, such a defect as the absence of the 
episcopal character on the part of the principal conse- 
crator would throw a very grave doubt on the validity 
of the consecration. It is quite sufficient to cause the 
doubt that various authorities should have taught that 
'one bishop alone effects the whole consecration.'" 
Under no possible theory, then, can the episcopal 
character of Parker or the validity of his consecration 
be more than doubtful on the score of his consecrators, 
whilst on the score of the form used, as we shall socti 



I06 FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR 

see, there was most certainly no valid consecration, even 
on the supposition that everything was done as the 
register supposes, and as the Anglicans themselves 
claim. As, however, some persons are not a little exer- 
cised over the, number of bishops essential to a valid 
consecration, and seem not able to distinguish between 
canons of discipline, and doctrines of faith, declaring 
Roman Catholic succession in America and Ireland 
disfigured, and in some measure vitiated because the 
canonical munbcr of tJirce bishops has been sometimes 
wanting, whilst owning that, "without this condition, 
the ordination may be valid, but it is irregular and 
defective," we purpose here to lay down from Van 
Espen the true Catholic doctrine, and the teaching and 
practice of the Christian Church on this subject. " By 
the canons of the Nicene and other councils the dis- 
cipline was established, as well in the Greek as in the 
Latin Church, that besides the ordaining bishop, two 
others ought to attend at the consecration of a bishop, 
and personally assist him. 

" The reason of this discipline was assigned by Pope 
Innocent I., writing in his epistle to Victricius, that 
' one bishop singly should not presume to ordain a 
bishop, lest the benefice seem to be conferred by 
stealth. For such was also the constitution defined in 
the Nicene Council !' As if he would say the council 
would not have a bishop to diSC&nd furtively, or -like a 
thief into the fold of Christ, but publicly, that is to 
say, with the universal ' Church, represented by the 
bishops of the province, approving and assenting. 
But neither by the Pope, nor by other authorities, is a 
consecration rejected as null and invalid, if done with- 
out the right number of bishops, but only censured as 



BA RL OW'S DOUBTF UL CONSE CRA 1 'ION. 



107 



clandestine, and performed without legitimate ap- 
proval ; for the presence of those bishops is required, 
not so much for the substance and validity of the con- 
secration, as for having it well considered and ap- 
proved. And therefore, in case of necessity, the con- 
secration can be given by a single bishop, since the 
presence of three, or even of two, appears to belong to 
discipline, and not to the substance or essence of the 
consecration." We do not then deny that, "Ancient 
as well as modern canons prescribe that three bishops 
should be present at a consecration. But this is barely 
2. precept, not an essential condition^ and it appears by 
the form used in the Church of England, as well as 
in the Catholic Church, that only one prelate is con- 
sidered as the consecrator." (Dr. Kenrick.) We might 
even introduce our friend to a Pope who lived and 
governed the Church before the Council of Nicea, in 
the time of the Emperor Trajan, who established this 
discipline, and decreed that a bishop should be conse- 
crated by not less than three bishops. This was Pope 
St. Anacletus. But surely this Apostolical authority 
and this venerable Catholic Church, which established 
these wise regulations, and disciplinary canons are 
competent to interpret them and carry them out in the 
spirit, and for the purposes that inspired them. She 
surely must be authorized to relax these her own laws 
when necessity requires it, in times of persecution, or 
in the conversion of pagan countries, and the evangeli- 
zation of nations. And most undoubtedly in the 
establishment of the American hierarchy, and the 
consecration of the first bishop of the American col- 
onies, to which our friend takes exception, there was 
nothing hostile or repugnant to the spirit of the 



I08 FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR 

Apostolical canons or the practice of the Christian 
Church, there was nothing done furtively or clandes- 
tinely, or without the knowledge, approval and assent 
of the clergy of the province and the universal Church. 
Dr. Carroll, " a most worthy prelate," (though, by the 
way, a Jesuit), was elected by his brethren of the 
clergy. Their choice was approved and confirmed by 
the Sovereign Pontiff, who in the usual form and style 
authorized him to receive the episcopal consecration 
from any Catholic bishop in communion with the 
Holy See. And if there was at that period no regular 
and canonical hierarchy in England, and if bishops 
were scarce and convened with difficulty in that once 
eminently Catholic island devoted to the Holy See 
and illustrated by saintly bishops, who is to blame, 
but the persecuting, apostate Church of England? And 
if Dr. Walmsley, bishop of ^^mdiiii partibiis infidelimn, 
and Vicar Apostolic of the district of London, cannot 
surround the solemn ceremony of the consecration of 
the first bishop of the American Church with all the 
eclat and pomp of a numerous attendance of his epis- 
copal brethren, the blame lies at the door of those who 
sought to crush out the Catholic hierarchy by fire and 
sword, by the most cruel and tyrannical persecution, 
and we think Anglicans ought not to force these mem- 
ories back upon us. The consecration was, however, 
in all other respects most solemn, regular and canonical, 
and no one ever dreamed of doubting its validity, or 
the legitimacy of the succession starting from it, and 
only a fertile and imaginative, perhaps poetical, brain 
could invent the new succession from Archbishop 
Bedini. 

This we deem sufficient, in reply to the call made 



BARLOW'S DO UB TF UL CONSE CRA TION. \ 09 

on US ''to clear up the difficulties which hang about 
our own orders," and the strange assertions that " no- 
body involved in such a consecration is in a position 
to object to the order of others." But we can hardly 
forbear a smile, when we read — ''But neither the 
Walmsley nor the Bedini ordination have [sic) any 
validity as establishing a canonical episcopate in this 
country. Our lawful bishops were already settled in 
their sees, according to the Catholic constitutions, 
having been duly elected by clieir dioceses, and no 
Italian prelate whatever could give any commission 
in this country without their consent, except in that de- 
fiance of all canons which for many years has been 
habitual with the Popedom." This is decidedly cool, 
some might call it cheeky. The bishops of the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church are here. Then beware. Cath- 
olics, how you intrude ! Supreme Pontiff, Bishop of 
Rome, though the whole flock of Christ is committed 
to thy care, " Feed my lambs, feed my sheep ;" 
though thou art constituted to " confirm thy brethren," 
and to sustain as a solid rock and immovable founda- 
tion the whole Church of Christ, venture not to send 
thy emissaries to the free land of America, where " our 
lawful bishops have already settled their sees." How- 
ever, the papacy has been for a long time — for well 
nigh 1900 years — accustomed to disregard such insen- 
sate pretensions, and to send its missionaries, priests 
and prelates, in defiance of infidelity, heresy and error 
of every kind, to plant the standard of the Cross, to 
preach Christ crucified, to teach the faith of the gospel 
in all lands, and this mission it will continue to fulfil to 
the end of time. But this comes with a singularly bad 
grace from one who it will be remembered by all our 



J lo BARLOIV'S DOUBTFUL CONSECKA 7'/0iV. 

readers congratulated, in a note published in all our 
papers, Reinkens on his consecration, and reached out 
to him the hand of fellowship as an episcopal brother 
in full standing, though Bishop Reinkens had gone all 
the way to Holland to be consecrated hy oiie Jansenist 
bishop, and had come back with what might rightly be 
called a roving commission as universal " Old Catholic" 
bishop of Germany, or som.ething of the kind, though 
the Catholic bishops 'ze/^r^ already established in theii' 
sees, and all refused to impose hands on him, or admit 
him to any share in their ofiice, dignity or charge. 
Kaiser Wilhelm commissions him ; Prince Bismarck 
cigns his episcopal brevet ; he promises servile obedi- 
ence to the State! This is warrant enough; no men- 
tion of violated canons; of irregular and defective ordi- 
nation! O consistency, thou art a jewel! 



■" 2' HE EDWARDINE ORDINAL. m 



' IX. 

THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME AS THE 
ROMAN PONTIFICAL — INVALIDITY OF FORM OF CON- 
SECRATION DEVISED BY EDWARD VI. 

AVING seen how vain is the attempt to make 
Scorey, Coverdale and Hodgkins supply for 
"Barlow's doubtful sufficiency to validly consecrate 
Parker, we come now to discuss the main question — is 
the form which Barlow is said to have used in the con- 
secration of Parker a valid form, capable of conferring 
a valid episcopal* consecration ? We before affirmed 
that whatever opinion we may form of the question of 
fact of Parker's consecration, which, as a matter of 
opinion and history, is to be determined by historical 
research, " It is absolutely certain that on account 
of the form used, Anglican, and consequently Protest- 
ant Episcopal, orders are vitiated and invalidated." 
Again, " Even if Barlow were a regularly consecrated 
bishop, and went through the form of Parker's conse- 
cration, the form used, namely, that devised, as the act 
expresses it, by Edward, was notoriously insufficient 
and invalid." And again, '' The Church established by 
law seems to have felt this herself, for, in the year 1662, 
just one hundred and three years too late to save 
Anglican orders (Parker's consecration, according to 
the Lambeth Register, was in 1559), convocation 



1 12 THE EDlVARDlNE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME . 

changed the form, evidently with the aim of supplying 
the defect pointed out by Catholic divines/" In reply, 
we are told. "The Roman Pontifical differs from the 
Ordinal by which Parker was consecrated in nothing 
which any theologian has ever ventured to pronounce 
essential." Now, we think it hardly w^orth our while 
to waste words v/ith any man who so boldly and un- 
blushingly sets truth at defiance, and contradicts all 
history. The fact is that every Catholic theologian, 
and every Catholic writer who has treated of the sub- 
ject, has denied the validity of all ordinations con- 
ferred according to the Ordinal of Edward, and surely 
that is making an essential difference between it and 
the Roman Pontifical. Such was the judgment of 
Cardinal Pole, legate of the Holy See, and archbishop 
of Canterbury, in the reign of Queen Mary, who, with 
his sub-delegates, theologians, counsellors, and ad- 
visers, investigated the question, v/hen everything was 
fresh and information easily obtained, when nobody 
could have any interest in concealing the truth, and 
when all must have been more than willing to recog- 
nize orders conferred according to the new rites, if the 
orders were valid. How much trouble would have 
been saved ! how many won over by a favorable de- 
cision ! None knew better than they what discontent 
and trouble would ensue if men were to be disturbed 
in the possession of benefices and bishoprics, to which 
they had been promoted according to the laws of the 
realm and forms devised by the king, and sanctioned 
by Parliament. Yet judgment, a solemn and deliberate, 
disinterested, impartial judgment, was then pronounced 
against the validity of Anglican orders, and that judg- 
ment has never been reversed. The same has been the 



^.S- THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 



ti3 



judgment of all Catholic theologians for three hundred 
years, and the same is the judgment of the Catholic 
Church to-day, and yet, here is a writer with some pre- 
tensions, too, to position and respectability, and ecclesi- 
astical knowledge, who not only insults truth and 
candor, but also the intelligence of his readers, by as- 
serting that the ' Roman Pontifical differs from the 
Ordinal by which Parker was consecrated in nothing 
which any theologian has ever ventured to pronounce 
essential." 

We might, perhaps, refer, not him, but his readers, to 
Dr. Milner(" End of Religious Controversy"), Most Rev. 
Francis Patrick Kenrick ('' Theologia Dogmatica"), Most 
Rev. Peter Richard Kenrick (" Anglican Ordinations"), 
Dom Wilfrid Raynal, O.S.B. (^' The Ordinal of Edward 
VI."), E, E. Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A. 0' The Question 
of Anglican Ordinations"), as theologians whose works 
are probably the most accessible, and who, ex professo, 
show the essential difference between the Catholic and 
the Anglican form of consecration, between the Roman 
Pontifical and the Edwardine Ordinal, and learnedly 
and conclusively demonstrate in the language of an 
able writer in the Dublin Review for July, 1873, that 
*'The orders conferred by the bishops who fell into 
heresy, and who used what is called the Edwardine Or- 
dinal, were held invalid, absolutely null, and unto this 
day there has been no change in the discipline of the 
Church." But our Buffalo divine appears to contradict 
himself, for, in speaking of the different pleas on which 
Catholics demur to the claim of Apostolic succes- 
sion in the Anglican Church, he says : *' The more 
decent controvertist tries to prove that the form of 
words is defective." Who are these more decent con- 



1 14 THE ED WARDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME . 

trovertists, unless theologians? And ho\v do they try 
to prove the form defective, unless by proving the 
Edwardine form insufficient and invalid, and conse- 
quently essentially different from the form of the 
Roman Pontifical? But we are taken to task, for as- 
serting what we have now affirmed, that Cardinal Pole 
and the. Church positively and constantly refused to 
recognize the vaHdity of Anglican orders, or the 
valid consecration of bishops, ordained according to 
the new rites devised by Edward, or the Ordinal which 
he published and forced on the English Church, as a 
substitute for the old English liturgies, thus : *' Dr. 
Ryan again quarrels with history, when he asserts that 
the Popes never recognized as bishops those ordained 
by the Ordinal of Edward. On the contrary, Pope 
Paul IV., his legate. Cardinal Pole, and all the papal 
bishops of England did this in Queen Mary's time, 
thus barring forever such cavils as Dr. Ryan has col- 
lected. Rome never pretended to doubt the validity 
of the consecrations under the Reformed Ordinal till 
she lost hope of regaining the Anglican Church." 

Now, on this, as on many other points, the gentle- 
man has been imposed upon and misled by Dr. Lee 
who, himself following the lead of Bramhall, pretends 
to produce " Roman Catholic testimonies to the valid- 
ity of Anglican orders." Canon Estcourt, who has 
entered into an elaborate and critical examination of 
this point, tells us : *"' However ambiguous may be the 
statements of Catholic divines referring to Parker's con- 
secration, there is no doubt with regard to either their 
opinion or their practice, when they come to deal with 
ordinations given and received according to the- form 
annexed to the Book of Common Prayer in 1552, and 



AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 115 

afterwards confirmed by the act, 8 Eliz. cap. I." 
After producing copious extracts from Allen, who 
states the practice of the English College at Rheims, 
from Bristow, Parsons and the petitions presented to 
King Jameson behalf of his Catholic subjects, which 
declares : " Neither is the Protestant minister nor 
bishop, coming to our Catholicke fraternity (as many 
come of the first sort), reputed other than for mere 
laymen without orders," and bringing the tradition of 
the invalidity of the Edwardine orders down from the 
time of Cardinal Pole, he makes out an interesting list 
of Anglican ministers reconciled to the Catholic Church 
before the year 1704, and ordained in the Catholic 
Church after their reconciliation. He then takes up 
in detail Dr. Lee's list of Anglican clergymen, who, 
after having been received into the Church, were said 
to have declined being ordained, because they believed 
themselves true priests, and premising that, " it is of 
very little importance what opinions these persons 
may have entertained on the subject, having been 
bred up in heresy, and not having studied a course of 
Catholic theology, nor having even imbibed Catholic 
instincts, they were not qualified to form a sound 
judgment on the question," he shows that Dr. Lee has 
no foundation for many of his statements; is incorrect 
in regard to others, and that many of the cases have 
no bearing on the controversy, and sums up the whole 
as follows : '' On review of these several cases it may 
be confidently asserted that there is an unbroken 
tradition from the year 1554, to the present time, con- 
firmed by constant practice in France and Rome as 
well as this country (England), in accordance with 
which Anglican orders are looked upon as absolutely 



1 1 6 THE ED WARDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME ' 

null and void ; and Anglican ministers are treated 
simply as laymen, so that those who wish to be- 
come priests have to be ordained unconditionally. 
Not a single instance to the contrary can be alleged. 
The only case in which any discussion appears to have 
arisen, is referred to by a contemporary writer as an 
illustration of the accustomed rule. And the state- 
ments made of objections having been raised by 
various converts to being ordained in the Catholic 
Church are shown either to be contradicted by the 
facts, or to have no theological importance, on account 
of the persons named being unknown, or married, or 
of an unsuitable character, or only recently converted, 
or possessing no clear and certain testimony as to 
their opinions on the subject." T\\q Dublin Review, in 
the article already mentioned, written by one, in our 
estimation, fully as much of a theologian as our Buffalo 
divine, thus continues this subject : '' People may dis- 
pute if they like, but the fact remains, that in the 
Church the Anglican orders have never been received, 
never at any time. Besides, there never was any doubt 
about them. The Catholics left in England after the 
persecutions of Elizabeth, and during them, never hesi- 
tated ; they saw with their eyes and heard with their 
ears, and not one of them, learned or unlearned, seems 
to have imagined for a moment that any of the minis- 
ters made by Parker could say Mass. It might puzzle 
a profound theologian to say where the flaw is, but no 
theologian, whether profound or not, has done anything 
else but confess the flaw." Of Canon Estcourt, the 
learned reviewer says : " He has shown by most con- 
clusive proofs that the Anglican ordinations have, in 
no instance, been recognized ; that the practice of the 



AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 



117 



Church has been uniform and constant from the days of 
Cardinal Pole, under whose archiepiscopate the ques- 
tion was first discussed ; it could not have been 
discussed before. From that day to this, the Angli- 
can ordinations have been regarded as nullities, con- 
veying no spiritual power whatever, and leaving the 
recipients as much laymen as ever they were in 
their lives." Now, what can we think of a man 
who has the hardihood to assert publicly that no theo- 
logian has ever ventured to question the validity of 
orders conferred according to the Edwardine Ordinal, 
or what is tantmount to that, namely, that the Roman 
Pontifical differs in nothing that any theologian has ever 
ventured to pronounce essential from the Ordinal by 
which Parker was consecrated. What confidence can 
we place in a writer who, with these facts staring him 
in the face, boldly and unblushingly afifirms, that 
Rome never pretended to doubt the validity of the 
consecrations under the reformed Ordinal, till she lost 
hope of regaining the Anglican Church ? We cannot 
forbear branding here another similar, deceitful, asser- 
tion : "The Pope did not withdraw the Papists from 
the Church of England, until the tenth year of Queen 
Elizabeth, and till this all his adherents remained in 
communion with their proper Church, and also in his 
communion. This fact proves that the Anglican 
bishops and clergy were fully recognized at Rome, so 
long as the Popes had any hope of regaining power 
over them." He refers to the bull of excommunication^ 
which, he tells us, Pius V. issued against Elizabeth in 
1570, to which he evidently attaches little importance, 
as he is convinced of the nullity and impotence of the 
Pope's spiritual and temporal authority, but when he 



1 1 8 THE ED IVARDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME 

talks of the Pope withdrawing the Papists from the 
Church of England in thetenth year of Elizabeth, and 
that, until then, his adherents remained in communion 
with their proper Church and in his communion, he 
talks silly nonsense, and, wishing to appeal to ignorant 
prejudices, he simply stultifies himself. But admire at 
least his logical acumen ! " This fact, viz. : — that the 
Pope did not withdraw the Papists from the Church of 
England until the tenth year of Elizabeth — proves that 
the Anglican bishops and clergy were fully recognized 
at Rome, so long as the Popes had any hope of regain- 
ing power over them." 

If you can't see it, so much the worse for you ; the 
fault lies in your dimness of vision, or dulness of per- 
ception, not in the argument, particularly when you 
know that all the bishops and clergy, who acknowl- 
edged the royal supremacy, were excommunicated in 
the time of Henry. We wonder if the gentleman knew 
this when he elaborated the above argument ? We 
wonder if he ever read how the bishops and the clergy 
in Mary's reign sued for reconciliation with the Church, 
and obtained, from the Papal legate, absolution from 
the excommunication and spiritual censures incurred 
by various acts of schism and heresy, during the reigns 
of Henry and Edward, and how the whole kingdom 
was publicly and solemnly reconciled to the Church, 
on the 30th of November, 1554, by Cardinal Pole, legate 
of the Holy See? Yes, he must at least have had some 
inkling of this. He must have read something of the 
legatine powers given by the Pope to Cardinal Pole, 
and the extraordinary faculties exercised by him, in 
reconciling and absolving and dispensing with the 
bishops and clergy in Mary's time, because it is from a 



AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 



119 



misunderstanding and misinterpretation of these facul- 
ties, and the cases in which they were exercised, that 
Bramhall, Elrington, Haddon and Lee erroneously con- 
cluded, as he does (for he only repeats, almost ver- 
batim, Bramhall's words), that : " King Edward's form 
of ordination was judged valid in Queen Mary's days 
by all Catholics, and particularly by Cardinal Pole, then 
Apostolic legate in England, and by the then Pope, 
Paul IV., and by all the clergy and Parliament of Eng- 
land." We shall soon show the true meaning of the 
powers and faculties granted to, and exercised by, the 
legate, and that they did not, and were never meant, 
to extend to the Edwardine clergy, and no one ordained 
by the Edwardine form was allowed to celebrate Mass 
or retain his benefice, unless after a new ordination. 
"The fact is," says Canon Estcourt, "the Anglican 
orders were completely ignored, and those who had 
received them were, to all intents and purposes, 
looked upon as mere laymen." 

That there is, then, an essential difference between 
the form of the Roman Pontifical, and that of the 
Edwardine Ordinal, by which Parker is said to have 
been consecrated, we have shown, and we named, for 
the benefit of those wishing to know the truth, some 
Catholic theologians who wrote expressly and pro- 
fessedly to demonstrate a difference so essential as to 
make one form valid, and the other invalid, and some 
theological and popular works easily accessible giving 
not only the opinion of their authors, but collecting 
the testimony of a cloud of witnesses, theologians and 
scholars, all testifying to the unbroken Catholic tradi- 
tion of the insufficiency and invalidity of all orders 
conferred according to the new rites devised by Edward, 



1 20 THE ED WARDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME 

Cranmer, and their worthy compeers. That such has 
been CathoHc tradition and unanimous teaching of 
theologians since the question was first mooted in the 
reign of Mary, we confirmed from the invariable prac- 
tice of the Church in ordaining iLuconditionally all 
Anglican prelates and presbyters who, returning to her 
bosom and the faith of their fathers, wished to exer- 
cise the holy ministry, and were found worthy to re- 
ceive the priestly character, and discharge the duties 
of the priestly office. This incontrovertible fact is 
overwhelming evidence of the mind of the Church re- 
garding the validity of Anglican orders, and the Or- 
dinal by which Parker was consecrated. As, however, 
this is a vital point, \\& have thought proper to add to 
the authorities alread}- given the testimony of Dodd, 
the historian, found in Appendix No. 42, " Dodd's 
Church History of England," by Canon Tierney, F.R. 
S., F.S.A. : 

" Though the consecration of bishops and priests, 
in Henry VHI.'s reign (after the schism happened, and 
a general interdict and excommunication was pro- 
nounced against the whole ecclesiastical body), was 
esteemed uncanonical, and annulled as to jurisdiction, 
yet all the time during the said reign, the validity of 
these consecrations was never contested by the Catho- 
lic party. But, in the succeeding reign of Edward VI., 
a considerable alteration being made in doctrinal 
points, and, among other things, a new Ordinal estab- 
lished, their ordination was not only looked upon as 
uncanonical, but also as invalid, upon account of the 
errors and omissions, which declared the unsufficiency 
of their Ordinal. The reformers not only struck out 
the article of obedience to the See of Rome (wliicli 



A S THE R OAIA N PON TIF I CAL. 121 

rendered their consecration uncanonical, and deprived 
them of all spiritual jurisdiction), but the most of them 
renewed the error of Arius, and made no essential dif- 
ference between the episcopal and sacerdotal character." 

To, these errors they added several others, which 
were directly incompatible with a valid ordination; that, 
ordination was not a sacrament instituted by Christ, but 
only a mere ceremony, to appoint a ministry in relig- 
ious performances; that, all power, both temporal and 
spiritual, was derived from the civil government, and. 
namely, from the king ; that, those of the episcopal 
character could perform nothing effectually towards 
the validity of their character, without the king's 
mandate or letters patent ; that, those of the sacerdotal 
character had no power to offer sacrifice, to Consecrate the 
Holy Eucharist, or to absolve from sin. This was the 
constant belief of both the consecrators, and of those 
that were consecrated according to the new Ordinal, 
to which may be added, that though they had held the 
orthodox points above mentioned, 'they made use of a 
matter and form that was insufticient, and not capable 
of conferring that power, which essentially belongs to 
the episcopal and sacerdotal character ; and that, hav- 
ing at the same time no intention to confer any orders, 
but such as were conformable to their errors, which 
were destructive of Christ's institution, their ordination 
was, ipso facto, null and invalid. 

These are the considerations Dr." Harding and others 
went upon, when they denied Jewel's character, and rep- 
resented the whole body of the reformed clergy to be no 
other than laymen, excepting such as were consecrated 
in Henry VHI 's reign, before the new Ordinal, or any 
other erroneous ceremony of ordination was made use 



122 THE ED IVAKDEXE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME 

of. For the same considerations, the learned divines 
of Queen Mary's reign, nay, the convocation, and even 
the legislative power in Parliament, declared the afore- 
said bishops and inferior clergy to be invalidly conse- 
crated ; and actually caused all those to be re-or- 
dained, in whom they found any essential defect. In 
the following reign of Queen Elizabeth, the divines of 
the Catholic party continued in the same opinion, con- 
cerning the invalidity of Protestant ordinations; and 
all were re-ordained, that came over to them, notwith- 
standing any pretended consecratipn among them- 
selves — Parker's Register, and the account there given 
of the consecrators' qualifications, being insignificant 
in the case, where an essential defect was alleged in the 
matter, form, and intention of the persons deputed to 
perform the ceremony." Now, if to this we add the 
testimony of Perrone, whom no one will deny to be a 
theologian, we shall have gathered for our readers data 
enough to enable them to form their own judgment 
about the assertion, that no theologian ever ventured 
to reject, as essentially invalid, the form of consecra- 
tion used by Barlow in the consecration of Parker, al- 
lowing that he did go through the ceremony at all. 
''Anglican orders are deemed null and void, not because 
they are conferred by heretics and schismatics, but on 
account both of the interruption of episcopal succes- 
sion in that sect, and of their form having been essen- 
tially vitiated ; ob vitiatam essentialiter forniainr 
(Perrone, de ord., cap. iv.) And in this connection, 
Canon Raynal makes the important remark that the 
'' Revised Ordinal was rejected by the Holy See some 
years before the alleged December consecration of 
Parker by Barlow." 



AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 123 

And Rev. Mr. Waterworth, in his historical lectures, 
thus refers to the same subject : " It is not here the 
place to enter into the validity of the orders conferred 
by the new Ordinal ; it will be sufficient to observe that 
it was composed principally by men who considered 
ordination an unnecessary rite ; and that in the ensuing 
reign, the statute authorizing the Ordinal was repealed, 
and the ordinations made, in conformity with it, reputed, 
both by the bishops and Parliament, invalid, principally 
because the anointing of the candidates, and the por- 
rection of instruments were omitted, and that no form 
of words zvas preserved significative of the orders con- 
ferredy Yet in spite of all this, our ''Old Catholic," 
misled by false teachers, stoutly avers that in Queen 
Mary's time the Pope and his legate. Cardinal Pole, and 
all Catholics judged King Edward's form of ordination 
valid. As the pains-taking Canon Estcourt has proved 
this false, after thoroughly sifting the whole matter, 
and investigating every particular case, we refer to it 
again only to show from the true character and tenor 
of the faculties granted to Cardinal Pole, how little 
those dispensations which he granted in virtue of those 
faculties, can be relied upon to prove that the cardinal 
recognized not only the ordinations celebrated in the 
schism under Henry VIII., but those also under Edward 
VI. The cardinal does, indeed, as" seen in Statutes i 
and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 8., dispense with and re- 
ceive in their orders and benefices those who should 
return to the unity of the Church. ''Onines ecclesiasticas 
personas * ^ * quce aliquas inipctrariint dispensationcs, 
'k Tf -k ^^jj^ ordines quani beneficia ecclesiastica, prc^tensa 
aiictoritate supremitatis ecclesicB Anglic ancB, licet null iter 
et de facto obtinnerinty et ad cor r ever see cedes ics inntati 



1 24 THE ED IVARDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME 

restitutce fiierint, in siiis ordinibus et beneficiis, miseri- 
corditer recipicntes, sccmn stiper his opportune in Domino 
dispensamusy Yet this proves nothing, as the same 
author shows, because only those are or could be re- 
ceived back in their orders, Avho had orders, and this is 
apparent from the tenor of the faculties which he re- 
ceived, and which he distinctly explains and interprets 
himself. In exercising his faculties, as Avell as in grant- 
ing to the reconciled bishops the extraordinary po\vers 
which as legate he held, he expressly distinguishes two 
classes of persons, viz., those who had been ordained 
during the schism, even unduly, by heretical and schis- 
matical bishops, yet according to the ancient Catholic 
rite.; and, secondly, those who held benefices without 
being ordained. The former were allowed " to exer- 
cise the sacred orders and the priesthood even, received 
as aforesaid from heretical and schismatical bishops, 
even unduly (minus rite), provided that the form and 
intention of the Church had been preserved ;" the latter 
might be ordained, if worthy, and retgin the benefices 
if otherwise canonically conferred, whilst numerous 
instances are adduced to shov/ that those latter were 
persons who had been ordained according to the new 
rites, and were acting as Anglican ministers. These, if 
unmarried and otherwise qualified, were to be ordained 
and retain their benefices. ''And thus," remarks the 
canon, " Dr. Elrington, Mr. Haddon, Dr. Lee, and 
other Anglican writers, have been entirely mistaken in 
referring the words ' minus rite' to ordinations after the 
Edwardine form." 

The fact then remains, and cannot be controverted, 
or challenged, that the Pope and cardinal wishing to 
facilitate the return of the English Church to Catholic 



A S THE ROMAN POX J . FIJAL, 



125 



unity, from which a tyrannical, lustful king had vio- 
lently torn her, stretched indulgence to the utmost 
limit, condoned all violations of canonical law and 
Church discipline, sanctioned whatever was not posi- 
tively against the substance of God's holy institutions, 
dispensed with irregularities, and absolved from eccle- 
siastical censures incurred by receiving holy orders, 
'minus rite,' without canonical sanction and approval 
of the Holy See, from prelates schismatical and here- 
tical, if only what was essential to the validity of the 
sacrament was observed ; and hence all the ordinations 
in Henry's time were recognized because the old form 
according to the Catholic Pontifical and the ancient 
English liturgies was used. But not a single instance 
can be adduced of the recognition or sanction of any 
ordinations performed in Edward's time, after the 
adoption of the new Ordinal, because they were abso- 
lutely intrinsically worthless, and no earthly power 
could give them force or value, because the sacramen- 
tal form was substantially destroyed, purposely and 
wickedly vitiated by men who sought to overturn the 
whole hierarchical order, by poisoning its very root, men 
who did not believe in the divine institution of the 
episcopate or priesthood, the sacrament of the Eucharist 
or the sacrifice of the Mass. Now, as we are not writ- 
ing a treatise de ordine, or de sacravientis in genere, but 
reviewing and exposing sophistries and refuting false 
assertions, we must refer our readers, wishing further 
information on any of the points which we skim over, 
to the authors and works already named, or to any 
recognized hand-book of theological science to be 
found in our Catholic book-stores. Having shown that 
we did not quarrel with history when we asserted that 



126 THE EDVVARDINE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME 

the Popes never recognized as bishops those ordained 
by the Ordinal of Edward ; having nailed the false- 
hood : "that Pope Paul IV., his legate, Cardinal Pole, 
and all the Papal bishops of England, did this in Queen 
Mary's time," and this other: "that Rome never pre- 
tended to doubt the validity of the consecration under 
the Reformed Ordinal, till she lost hope of regaining 
the Anglican Church ;" and having, in our own opin- 
ion at least, shown that Popes, legates, bishops, theo- 
logians, the whole Church, constantly, unconditionally, 
without an exception, and with entire unanimity, in 
teaching and in practice, rejected as worthless the or- 
ders conferred by Edward's Ordinal, we may proceed 
to discuss our next point. 

"When Dr. Ryan presumes to object to the Angli- 
can formula of ordination, I have only to reply that it 
is the same which was used in England before the Ref- 
ormatiofi, and is essentially the same on which his own 
orders depend — ' receive ye the Holy Ghost.' " 

Here are three distinct propositions, all equally false 
and untenable, (i) That the Anglican formula of conse- 
cration is the same that was used in England before 
the Reformation ; (2) That it is essentially the same as 
that on which Dr. Ryan's orders depend ; and, by im- 
plication, at least, (3) That, "Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost," is the essential formula on which orders in the. 
Catholic Church depend, or the essential sacramental 
form of ordination. 

Let us examine each of these propositions: (i) The 
Anglican formula of consecration is the same that was 
used in England before the Reformation. Did not 
Edward then appoint a commission composed of six 
bishops and six others learned in the law to draw up a 



AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 



127 



new Ordinal, to suit and accompany the new liturgy, 
recently compiled and introduced, enforced by pains 
and penalties? Is there not on the statute book of 
England, an act that reads: "For as much as concord 
and unity to be had within the king's majesty's domin- 
ions, it is requisite to have one uniform fashion and 
manner of making and consecrating of bishops, priests, 
and deacons, or ministers of the Church, be it therefore 
enacted, by the king's highness, with the assent of the 
lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this 
present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of 
the same, that such form and manner of making and 
consecrating bishops, priests and deacons, and other 
ministers of the Church, as by six prelates, and six other 
men of this realm learned in God's law, by the king's 
majesty to be appointed and assigned, or by the most 
number of them, shall be devised for that purpose, 
shall, by virtue of this present act, be lawfully exercised 
and used, and none other, any statute or law or usage- 
to the contrary notwithstanding"? (3 and 4 Ed. vi. c. 
12). Were not several Catholic bishops who saw the 
tendency and aim of this new Ordinal, and the purpose 
of its framers and compilers, and on that account re- 
fused to give their consent or approval to the same, 
deprived and sent to the Fleet? Or, will any one dare 
to maintain, that the new Ordinal is the same as "the 
old ? Why, then devise a new one ? Why did the 
Bishops, Tonstall, Aldrich, Heath, Day and Thirlby 
protest in Parliament against the commission appointed 
to compose it? Why did it require penal laws to force 
the bishops to use it ? Why was Heath punished with 
inprisonment for refusing to approve it? 

But (2) can any one be bold enough to say that the Or- 



128 THE ED WARDINE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME 

dinal, composed by Edward's mixed commission, is the 
same as the old Sarum Pontifical? or that the meagre, 
meaningless formula of episcopal consecration: "Take 
the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the 
grace of God, which is in thee by the imposition of 
hands ; for God has not given us the spirit of fear, but 
of power and love, and soberness," is the same as that 
found in the Gregorian Sacramentary, brought from 
Rome by St. Augustine ? " The traditional forms," says 
Canon Raynal, " brought from Rome by St. Augustine 
in the Gregorian Sacramentary, are found in the Anglo- 
Saxon Pontificals of Ecgberht, and St. Dunstan, and 
can be traced from the Roman conquests to the very 
days of the impious Cranmer. " Dr. Pusey, in his 
Eirenicon, convicts somebody either of not knowing 
what he is talking about, or deliberately falsifying 
facts. '' The form adopted at the consecration of Arch- 
bishop Parker was carefully framed on the old form 
used in the consecration of Archbishop Chichele a 
century before. * * * The tradition of that consecra- 
tion was then '^ only a century old." Then it was not 
the formula in use before the Reformation. It had 
not been used for a whole century. And Dr. Pusey 
says its use even then was exceptional, " having been 
resorted to at a time when the English Church did not 
acknowledge either of the claimants to the Papacy ;" 
and that the form was wholly different from that used 
in the consecration of the number of archbishops con- 
secrated in obedience to Papal Bulls. Dr. Pusey's testi- 
mony then proves clearly that the Anglican formula 
of ordination was not that used in England before the 
Reformation, but one whose use was exceptional, and 
he thinks, '' it was of the providence of God that they 



AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 



129 



had that precedent to fall back upon." Now, we need 
not stop here to tell our readers that the only possible 
explanation of this assertion of Dr. Pusey is, as Canon 
Estcourt remarks, that Chichele was consecrated ac- 
cording to the form in the Roman Pontifical, in which 
the words, Accipe Spiritinn Sancttun are found, and not 
according to the old English Sariini. Nor need we 
stop to remind Dr. Pusey that it was one of these 
claimants to the Papacy, viz., Gregory XII., who con- 
secrated Chichele, bishop of St. David, in the year 
1408, and that afterwards, in 1414, when promoted to 
the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, he was confirmed 
by Pope John XXIII. This, by the way, to show how 
true it is that England did not recognize the authority 
of the Pope, and that the Pope did not exercise any 
jurisdiction within that kingdom. 



130 



THE INSUFFICIENCY OF 



X. 



THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL, 

CONTINUED. 

HAVING seen that the Anglican formula of ordina- 
tion is not the same as that used in England 
before the Reformation, is not the same as that found 
in the Sarum Pontifical, or the Gregorian Sacra- 
mentary brought from Rome by St. Augustine and 
''used until the time of the impious Cranmer,"we 
come to the second proposition that the "Anglican 
formula of ordination is essentially the same as that 
on which Dr. Ryan's own orders depend," we must 
remark that our objections are to the formula of 
consecration said to have been used by Barlow 
in the consecration of Parker, that devised by 
Edward and found in the Ordinal composed by his 
mixed commission. We do not, however, wish to in- 
timate that the form now used in the Anglican ordina- 
tion rite, revised, corrected, and amended as it has 
been, especially by the addition made in 1662, is a 
sufificient or valid form, and we do not care to quarrel 
with the declaration : " the words added in 1662, while 
they add something to the dignity of the rite, were 
never supposed by any body in his senses to add any- 
thing to its validity." We only wish to avoid confusion 



THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL. 



131 



by having it understood that in the proposition : *'The 
Anglican formula of ordination is essentially the same 
as that on which Dr. Ryan's own orders depend," the 
Edwardine form is meant, for to this alone exceptions 
are taken, and whether the other is or is not valid, is 
of no consequence, since it came upwards of one hun- 
dred years too late to rehabilitate or give force or 
value to Anglican orders. Dr. Pusey is more candid 
and more correct than most Anglicans, when he ac- 
knowledges that the forms used when bishops were 
consecrated in obedience to Papal Bulls, were wholly 
different from that used at Parker's consecration. Now, 
as, not only all the bishops of England, from the in- 
troduction of Christianity into the island were always 
consecrated in obedience to Papal Bulls until Henry, 
bullying a weak and servile hierarchy and Parliament, 
ordained that bishops should be consecrated only in 
obedience to his royal Bulls, but also, we, and all the 
Catholic bishops of Christendom of the Latin rite have 
been consecrated in obedience to Papal Bulls and by 
the forms found in the Roman Pontifical, the form on 
which our orders depend, was, to say the least, even 
according to Dr. Pusey, very different from the Angli- 
can formula. Can they then be essentially the same ? 
We hold they are essentially different and precisely be- 
cause purposely, dc indust^'ia, Cranmer and his Cal- 
vinistic co-laborers, in framing the new Ordinal, modi- 
fied, altered and omitted what we regard as essential 
in the ancient rite, and thus made the new, reformed 
Ordinal, substantially and essentially at variance with 
the Roman Pontifical. We beg our friend to take the 
Mechlin edition of the Roman Pontifical, to which he 
in a foot-note refers, and which he presumably has, or 



132 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF 

if not, we will cheerfully loan him the one now before 
us, and compare it with his own Ordinal. 

It would occupy too much of our space to 
show all the points wherein they differ, even all es- 
sential points, at least, what we deem essential points, 
and hence we can here only insist that a careful and 
critical examination of the Anglican forms of m.aking, 
ordaining and consecrating bishops, priests and dea- 
cons will reveal the fact which the " Question of An- 
glican Ordinations," draws out lengthily, conclusively, 
viz. : that they were framed purposely with a view of 
excluding the idea of sacramental efficacy, or a conse- 
crated character impressed on the soul. They recognize 
no divine gift of grace or power communicated through 
the rite, conferred by the sacrament ; that, alterations, 
omissions and novel additions to the liturgy and Pon- 
tificals have been made with set purpose and design to 
introduce the newly invented doctrine of the Reform- 
ers, to destroy the spirit and sacramental idea of the 
holy rite of ordination. Too late the schismatical 
Bishops, Heath, Day and Tonstall perceived — what 
Gardiner and Bonner had realized from the start — that 
Cranmer was bent on the destruction of the English 
hierarchy, the divine institution of the priesthood and 
the holy sacrifice, by tampering with the form of the 
sacrament of the Holy Orders ; and they protested 
against the appointment of a commission to devise a 
new form of consecrating and ordaining bishops, priests, 
deacons and other ministers. '*The commission, how- 
ever," says Canon Raynal, '' obtained the sanction of 
the Great Seal for their newly devised forms, and with- 
out further trouble forced them upon the bishops. 
This was in sober truth the dismantling of the for- 



THE EDIVARDINE ORDINAL. 



133 



tress." In the form of ordination to the priesthood : 
'' there is no indication of looking for a gift of grace 
peculiar to the order, nor for any interior con- 
secration, nor for any special power of priesthood ; 
such a gift of grace as communicated through 
the imposition of hands, is unasked for, unrecog- 
nized, unknown ; it is completely ignored. Those 
parts of the ancient Catholic rite which indicated such 
grace are omitted, and the portions of the ceremony 
still retained are so changed as to exclude any such 
idea. The forms and phrases used are either new, or 
else applied in a sense quite different from that under- 
stood by the Catholic Church." In the Edwardine form 
of consecrating bishops, " the few slight phrases of the 
Pontifical that are preserved, show that the compilers 
had the ancient form before them, and that while 
keeping up a pretence of the same thing, they delib- 
erately altered it, in order to reduce it to the Lutheran 
and Zuinglian notions of a mere admission to an of- 
fice and a trial before a congregation." " There is no 
mention of the functions of a bishop, as in the Pontifi- 
cal, ^ Episcopuin oportet judicare, interpreta,ri consecrare^ 
confirmare, ordinare^ offerreet ba,ptizare,' The functions 
alluded to in the new Ordinal are, * to govern^ to in- 
struct, to teach, and exnort, to convince gainsayers, to 
drive away erroneous doctrine, to correct and punisli^ 
though in 1662, 'to ordain' was added. But as it stood 
at first, there was no allusion to administering any sac- 
rament, or to anything requiring the power of order." 
Again, as a proof that the Anglican form of conse- 
crating is not the same as that of the Roman Pontifi- 
cal, please to note the very serious and essential omis- 
sion in the former of the two prayers of the Pontifical 



134 



THE INSUFFICIENCY OF 



having special reference to the grace of the episcopal 
order: ''Be propitious, O Lord, to our suppHcations, 
and turning over on this thy servant the horn (that 
is, abundance, or plenitude) of sacerdotal grace, pour 
out to him the power of thy benediction." '' And 
therefore grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to this, thy 
servant, whom Thou hast chosen unto the ministry of 
the HigJi Priesthood. * ^ ^ Complete, O Lord, in 
thy priest the sum (or perfection) of thy ministry." In 
fact, as Canon Estcourt remarks, whilst '' certain ex- 
pressions are retained and taken from the prayer an- 
ciently called ' Consecratio^' every phrase that expresses 
a divine power, an authority coming from God, a 
sacramental efficacy, is studiously omitted. There is 
no prayer for the gift of the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven, nor of the power of binding and loosing, nor 
of the episcopal chair to rule the Church and people 
committed to him. Almighty God is not asked to be 
his authority, his power, his firmness. He is to be 
ready to preach the gospel and glad tidings of recon- 
cilement ; but the ministry of reconciliation is not 
given to him. He is to be the faithful and wise ser- 
vant giving the Lord's family meat in due season, but 
not one whom God sets over his family. Even ' the 
power which Thou dost bestow' (as the Pontifical has 
it), is changed into ' the authority given him,' leaving 
the source of the authority untold. And when we 
look back in order to know what the authority is, we 
find only, 'such authority as ye have by God's word, 
and as to you shall be committed by the ordinance 
of this realm.' Thus the prayer is only for grace to 
fulfil certain duties, and it does not ask for, nor recog- 
nize any sacramental gift whatever." And this is 



\ 



THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL. jor 

just what we might expect from the well known, and 
often and publicly avowed sentiments of the compil- 
ers of the Ordinal. This ought to be more than 
enough to show that the formula of ordination of the 
Edwardine Ordinal, on which hang the validity of 
Parker's consecration, and the orders of the Anglican 
Church, is not essentially the same as that of the 
Roman Pontifical, on which depend Catholic orders. 
But (3), as some seem to regard nothing as es- 
sential but the words : *' Receive ye the Holy Ghost," 
we will now try to prove that this proposition is as false 
and untenable as the other two ; that " Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost," cannot be the sole essential form of 
episcopal consecration. One simple syllogism should 
be enough to settle this point. That cannot be the 
sole essential form of consecration, which was not 
known in the Church, used in ordination of a bishop, 
or found in any Pontifical earlier than the 13th century. 
But the formula, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost" was not 
known in the rite of episcopal ordination, and is not 
found in any Pontifical or Sacramentary earlier than the 
13th century, therefore it cannot be the sole essential 
form of consecration. Some one, then, has been again 
misled by his usual blind guides. Mason, an author- 
ity for our friend, admits the necessity of a sacramental 
form in Holy Order, and that, for the validity of this 
form, its words should denote the special order con- 
ferred and the power given. But the words, *' Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost," do not express the special office, 
order or power conferred, therefore they cannot be the 
sole sacramental form of episcopal consecration. Yet, 
with strange inconsistency, and a boldness of assertion 
and disregard of logic, worthy even of some one whom 



136 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF 

we know, he gravely maintains, that : " If the imposi- 
tion of hands be the sole essential matter of the epis- 
copate (as all theologians are agreed that the words 
which are pronounced whilst the matter is used, con- 
stitute the form), the words ^Accipe Spiritiivi Sanc- 
tum,' (Receive the Holy Ghost) must be the sole 
essential form, and as these are found in the Edwardine 
form, the bishops of the Anglican Church must be true 
bishops." Hereupon Canon Raynal remarks : *' Mason 
evidently did not know the fact that the words ''Accipe 
Spiritum Sanctum,' were comparatively a recent ad- 
dition to the episcopal form, and being a recent addition, 
could not be the sole essential form. Otherwise the epis- 
copate was never validly conferred during a thousand 
years." And referring to the illogical conclusion which 
Mason draws from his incorrect premises. Dr. Champ- 
ney says : " It is a marvel to me, that he should so 
peremptorily say, that their bishops are ordained with 
true matter and form. But he doth well to be bold in 
affirming, for a good face sometimes helpeth out an 
ill game." 

Many other reasons might be assigned why these 
words, ^' Receive ye the Holy Ghost," as they are found 
in the Edwardine Ordinal, cannot be the sole essential 
or sufficient form of episcopal consecration. They do 
not indicate the order or express the distinctive char- 
acter or power of the episcopacy ; they are vague and 
indeterminate; they are used alike, and with equal 
fitness in the ordination of a bishop, a priest and a 
deacon ; and in the form used in the Anglican Church 
until 1662, when Cosin and others thought fit to make 
the change, there was not a syllable in the form for 
consecrating bishops to determine which order it was 



THE EDVVARDINE ORDINAL. 



13; 



intended to confer. In fact it is, as Dr. Milner observes, 
''just as proper for the ceremony of confirming or lay- 
ing hands upon children as for conferring the powers 
of the episcopacy." But let us see how our Buffalo 
critic maintains the sufficiency of this form, "Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost." "As these were," he argues, 
''the only words used by Christ Himself in giving the 
Apostolic commission, it may be well asked, what more 
can be needed to continue it ?" Here, indeed, is some- 
thing to astonish us ! "As these were the only words 
used by Christ Himself in giving the Apostolic com- 
mission" ! ! Surely, he must have written that sen- 
tence for us, poor benighted Papists, who are not al- 
lowed to read our Bibles ! or he could not have haz- 
arded such an assertion. However, not trusting our 
memory in opposition to so positive an affirmation, we 
turn to the holy gospel to verify what sounds 
strangely to us. Opening the gospel according to St. 
Matthew, we find no mention of these words, but we 
do find our Lord giving the Apostolical commission 
with authority to teach, and baptize, and discharge all 
the functions consequent thereon in the well-known 
words: "All power is given to me in heaven and on 
earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations ; baptiz- 
ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I have commanded you : and behold 
lam with you all days, unto the end of the v/orld." 
(Matt, xxviii. 18, et seq.) Most interpreters would 
take these words as giving the Apostolic commission 
and assuring its perpetuity. 

Coming next to St. Mark's gospel, we again search 
in vain for the words, which, we are told, are the only 



138 



THE INSUFFICIENCY OF 



ones used by Christ in giving the ApostoHc commission. 
We do, indeed, find such words as these : '^ Go ye into 
the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 
He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved, but 
he that believeth not, shall be condemned." (Mark 
xvi.,' 15, 16.) Once more we turn to St. Luke, and 
still find no trace of these words, though the risen 
Saviour declares to His Apostles that '' penance and 
the remission of sins should be preached in His name 
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, and ye 
are witnesses of these things. And I send the prom- 
ise of my Father upon you." (Luke xxiv., 47, 48, 
49.) In the gospel according to St. John we find the 
world's Redeemer on the first day of the week entering 
where the disciples were gathered together: '' He said 
therefore to them again: Peace be to you: as the 
Father hath sent me, I also send you. When He had 
said this He breathed on them and said to them : Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins ye shall forgive 
they are forgiven them, and whose sins ye shall retain 
they are retained." (John xx., 21, 22, 23.) Now how 
can the man say in the face of an intelligent Bible- 
reading community that, " Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost," were the only words used by Christ, in giving 
the Apostolic commission? He gave his apostles their 
commission when he bade them go teach all nations, 
preach the gospel, and baptize in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. He 
gave them power and authority to fulfil this commis- 
sion, v/hen He sent them, as He had been sent by His 
Father ; He breathed into their souls the grace and 
power of the Holy Ghost to enable them to execute 
and perpetuate the divine commission until the end of 



THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL. 



139 



time, and He clearly intimates among the duties and 
powers contained in the commission, and communi- 
cated to them by the same, the duty and power of 
forgiving sin in His name, ''whose sins ye shall forgive^ 
they are forgiven them ; and whose sins ye shall retain 
they are retained!' Surely, no man with this page of 
the gospel open before him, can say that " Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost," were the only words spoken by our 
Lord when commissioning His Apostles, or that these, 
more than the other words spoken on the same occa- 
sion, were intended by the Saviour as the essential 
form of the sacrament of orders or the rite of ordina- 
tion by which that commission was to be continued. 



I40 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



-XI. 

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 
THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD, CONTINUED. 

IN establishing our thesis that the form of consecra- 
tion by which Barlow is said to have consecrated 
Parker, was altogether an insufficient and invalid form, 
invalidatincr all the orders'in the Ans^lican Church, Ave 
have had to meet and disprove the assertions : (i) that 
such was the form used in England before the Reforma- 
tion ; (2) that it is substantially identical with the form 
of the Pontifical by which we ourselves were con- 
recrated ; (3) that Receive ye the Holy Ghost is the es- 
sential and the only essential form of episcopal conse- 
cration ; and that these were the only words used by 
Christ in giving the Apostolic commission. How very 
unwarranted and untenable these assertions are must 
be apparent to every reader who has followed up the dis- 
cussion, and what amazes us is that such totally 
groundless assertions could have been published by 
any one pretending to historical and ecclesiastical 
knowledge. But there is really no limit to boldness 
of assertion, and in the interest of truth, and for the 
sake of the simple and unwary who may have no 
chance of examining or ever seeing any Catholic 
authors, we must still further follow up and expose the 
errors, falsehoods, and fallacies of this writer, pub- 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. j^j 

lished here, on the subject of the Ordinal of Edward 
and the Roman Pontifical. Thus he writes: 

"■ His (our) own Pontifical is certainly less explicit 
on this point (of the form) than the Ordinal of Edward ; 
for while in both we have the formula, Receive the 
Holy Ghost, there is nothing more in the Pontifical ; 
while the Ordinal goes on with the very zvords of the 
Holy Ghost to a bishop, thus defining the precise 
charisma bestowed by the laying on of hands." We 
are inclined to ask, at reading the above extracts, that, 
TJie Pontifical is less explicit than the Ordinal of 
Edward, and that : /;/ the Pontifical there is nothing more 
than the bare words. Receive the Holy Ghost, has the 
gentleman ever seen or read the Pontifical published at 
Mechlin, to which he refers ? If he has, he either does 
not understand its language, and has merely copied 
second-hand statements of false teachers, or he is, in 
bad faith, trying to deceive those who perhaps will never 
have an opportunity of seeing a Pontifical. Is that 
fair and honest in a minister of religion ? We are then 
tempted to quote here the most beautiful and appro- 
priate prayers of the Pontifical which immediately 
follow X^v^"" Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,'' ^^ Receive the 
Holy Ghost,'' prayers that really determine and express 
the order of the episcopacy, the plenitude of the priest- 
hood, the High Priesthood, the sum or completeness 
and perfection of the m.inistry, figured in the Levitical 
law by -the priesthood of Aaron ; prayers which ac- 
tually and explicitly define — what the vague and un- 
meaning form of Edward's Ordinal positively does not 
— the special graces and precise charisma bestowed by 
the laying on of hands. Though somewhat lengthy, these 
beautiful prayers of the ordination service in the 



142 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



Pontifical will well repay a perusal, and, more forci- 
bly than any words of ours, they will evince how 
utterly unreliable is our Buffalo controversialist. 

*' Be propitious, O Lord, to our supplications, and 
as the horn of sacerdotal grace is outpoured upon 
these Thy servants, do Thou send down upon them 
the strength of Thy blessing. Through," etc. 

" O God of all honors, God of all dignities which in 
sacred Order minister to Thy glory; O God, in the 
secret and familiar converse with Thy servant, Moses, 
amongst other directions for Divine worship. Thou 
didst prescribe also the forms of the priestly attire, 
and didst command Aaron, Thy elect, to be vested in 
mystic robes when offering sacrifice ; in order that pos- 
terity might hereafter derive knowledge from the 
usages of the ancients, and the instruction of doctrine 
might not fail at any time. Mere symbolism won rever- 
ence amongst those of old, but to us realities were to 
be more familiar than mystic figures. Thus the attire 
of the ancient priesthood is a symbol of the adornment 
of our mind, and it is no longer the honor of garment, 
but beauty of soul, that renders Pontifical glory com- 
mendable unto us. Yea, even in former times, they 
looked more to the mystic significance of things than 
to the pleasure they gave the carnal sight. Where- 
fore, O Lord, we beseech Thee to bestow Thy grace 
upon these, Thy servants, whom Thou hast chosen to 
the ministry of the High Priesthood, that whatsoever 
was signified in those garments by the brightness of 
gold, the splendor of gems, and the variety of em- 
broidery, may shine forth in their lives and in their 
actions. Perfect in Thy priests the fulness of Thy 
ministry ; clothe them with every adornment of glory, 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 



H3 



and sanctify them with the outpouring of heavenly- 
unguent. May it. O Lord, fiovv abundantly upon their 
heads, may it bedew their lips, and overspread their 
whole frame, that the strength of Thy Spirit may in- 
wardly replenish them, and clothe them outwardly. 
Let steadfast faith, pure love, and sincere peace abound 
in them. 

" Place them in the Episcopal Chair to rule Thy 
Church and the whole of Thy people. Be Thou unto 
them authority, power, and strength; multiply upon 
them Thy blessing and Thy grace, that, rendered worthy 
by Thy bounty to invoke Thy name, they may also be- 
come holy through Thy grace. Through," etc. 

These prayers of the Pontifical are identical with 
those of the Leonine Sacramentary, so called from 
Pope St. Leo the Great, who sat in the chair of Peter, 
A. D. 440-461, to whom they are attributed. Even 
if he be not the author, for some seem to question it, 
the Sacramentary that bears his name is the oldest 
liturgical work extant in the Church either East or 
West, and antedates by centuries the liturgies con- 
taining the words, '^ Receive ye the Holy Ghost;" 
which, though now an integral part of the form of con- 
secration, are comparatively of recent origin. Courayer 
himself admits that the form '' Receive tJie Holy Ghost 
was not observed for many ages in the primitive 
Church." It is strange, then, but true, as a contem- 
porary author remarks, that "the Reformers, pretend- 
ing to go back to ancient rites, were misled by a blind 
adherence to their Popish doctors, the mediaeval 
schoolmen, who taught that the imperative form of 
ordination, and the delivery of the instruments were 
essential and of more importance than the prayers 



144 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



from the ancient Sacramentaries. This seems Hke a 
retribution for their unauthorized and sacrilegious 
meddhng with the sacred traditions of the Church." 
But as we have transcribed the prayers of the Pontifi- 
cal which are most commonly regarded as the form of 
episcopal consecration, and as we have been speaking 
of the Anglican form, devised by Edward VI., and re- 
vised and augmented in the reign of Charles II., we 
will now place the latter in juxtaposition before our 
readers, that they may compare them with one another, 
and with the prayers of the Pontifical given above: 

Form of co7tsecrating Bishops Form of consecration ameiided 
devised by Ediuard VI., by convocation in 1662. 

in 1549. 

"Take the Holy Ghost, " Receive the Holy Ghost 
and remember that thou for the office and work of 
stir up the grace of God, a bishop in the Church 
which is in thee by the of God, committed unto 
imposition of hands; for thee by the imposition of 
God has not given us our hands ; in the name 
the spirit of fear, but of of the Father, and of the 
power, and love and sober- Son, and of the Holy 
ness." Ghost. And remember 

that thou stir up the grace 
of God, which is given 
thee, by this imposition 
of our hands ; for God 
hath not given us the 
spirit of fear, but of power 
and love and soberness." 

''But the Ordinal," says the writer, "goes on with 
the very words of the Holy Ghost to a bishop." This 
again is disingenuous and deceitful. These words ?,re 



THE ORDINAL OF ED WARD. 



145 



simply the admonition of St. Paul to Timothy, to stir 
up the grace of God which he had already received, 
and though they prove, as Catholic divines teach, that 
grace is conferred in the sacrament of orders, and that, 
consequently, it has one of the necessary conditions or 
requisites of a sacrament of the new law, viz. : the con- 
ferring of grace, they do not define the precise charisma 
bestozued by the laying on of hands ^ they do not indicate 
the communication of the episcopal character, the con- 
ferring of the episcopal order; they are consequently 
insuf^cient, and the form is still, in spite of them, an 
invalid form. "Do these words, then," we are asked, 
"detract from grace?" Not at all. Who ever said or 
even insinuated that they did ? 

But he continues : " The words added in 1662, while 
they add something to the dignity of the rite, were 
never supposed by anybody in his senses to add any- 
thing to its validity." Transeat^ we are certainly under 
no obligation to defend the validity of the new rite, 
but mark now the sophisty : "If the lack of them (the 
words added in 1662) deprives the older Ordinal of 
validity, then the same lack must deprive Catholic con- 
secration of validity." That there was a lack of some- 
thing essential in the Edwardine form was apparent 
from the commencement to all who believed in the 
divine institution of the episcopate and the sacra- 
mental character of Holy Orders. The reformers were 
upbraided by- the Catholics and Puritans alike with the 
insuf^ciency of the new rite to establish episcopacy. 
The Catholics openly accused the compilers of a design 
to blot out the episcopacy as a divine vocation con- 
ferring, jure divino, special powers, and imparting 
special graces, of making bishops merely " ecclesastical 



146 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 

sheriffs," subject to the orders and bidding of the king, 
levelling down all the different orders of the hierarchy, 
thus abolishing all distinction between bishops and 
priests by making no essential difference in the form 
of ordaining both. "In nothing," says Dr. Milner, 
"does Cranmer's spirit of Presbyterianism appear so 
plain as in his form of consecrating bishops." Thus, 
we see the Edwardine form, by the express design of its 
framers, actually did what the Pope and Catholic divines 
are falsely accused of doing, viz. : it destroyed the epis- 
copal order, and the Presbyterians of the 17th century 
protested against Anglican bishops being admitted into 
the House of Lords, to which they had no more right, 
they maintained, than their own ministers, and they 
called on the Anglican Church to disavow all episcopal 
rights and privileges, " since in the ordination of her 
clergy, she hivariably used forms which established no 
distinction between the episcopate and the priesthoodr 
The Kirk of Scotland openly asserted the existence of 
bishops in the Anglican Church to be incompatible with 
the use of forms destructive of the episcopate. Bishop 
Burnet acknowledges in his " History of the Reforma- 
tion," that in Edward's Ordinal " there was no express 
mention made in the ordination of a priest and a bishop 
of any words to determine that it was to the one or the 
other office the person was ordained, and that this 
having been made use of to prove both functions the 
same, and that the Church esteemed them one order, 
the form was altered of late years as it is now." There 
was then felt to be a lack of something in the Edwardine 
form, and Bishop Cosin and his associates in convocation 
in 1662 undertook to supply what was lacking. 
Whether it was with a view to silence the clamors of 



THE ORDINAL OF ED WARD. 



147 



the Dissenters, or to meet the objections of the Catho- 
lics, or to quiet the scruples of Anglican bishops of the 
Laudian school, who, after the restoration of the Stuart 
king, and after having been brought during a foreign 
exile in contact with Catholic bishops, had conceived 
other and truer notions of their own dubious orders, is 
of little consequence to us or to our argument, though 
it looks a little suspicious, that convocation regarded 
the change as something more than merely adding to 
the dignity of the rite. 

All the circumstances of that change taken together 
and duly considered, there is no doubt in our mind that 
convocation aimed at supplying essential defects in- 
validating the form, pointed out by Catholic divines, 
and especially by a learned convert from Protestantism, 
Rev. John Lewgar, in a polemical work styled '■'Erastus 
Senior^'' published precisely at the time of the sitting 
of convocation. We conclude then with Dr. Kenrick 
that, '' If the forms devised by Edward VI. were suffi- 
cient, the convocation of 1662, by changing them, es- 
pecially in those points in which their validity had been 
assailed, inflicted a wound on the character of English 
orders, which it will be extremely difficult to heal or 
remove. If the forms of Edward VI. were not suffi- 
cient, the change came one hundred and three years 
too late ! Hence, whichever opinion be adopted, the 
validity of English orders has been most seriously com- 
promised by those who should have maintained it." 
But now, please to note this style of argumentation : 
" If the lack of these words deprives the older Ordinal 
of validity, then the same lack must deprive Catholic 
consecration of validity. " What wonderful logical acu- 
men. Who would ever think of asserting that it was 



148 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



the lack of these words, added in 1662, which rendered 
the older Ordinal insufficient, and the Edwardine form 
invalid ; and that because these precise words, which 
Bishop Cosin and his brethren in convocation devised to 
remedy the defects of their jejune form of conse- 
cration are not found in the Roman Pontifical, there- 
fore, all consecrated by that old and venerable liturgy 
which dates back for centuries before Cosin lived, or 
Cranmer apostatized, or king and Parliament arrogated 
to themselves the right or power to establish the 
"manner of making and consecrating of bishops, 
priests," etc., are not validly consecrated. There was 
indeed a lack, and a patent and fatal lack, in the form 
of Edward's Ordinal, but that lack originated precisely 
because Cranmer and his co-laborers, appointed and au- 
thorized by act of Parliament to establish " a uniform 
fashion and manner of making and consecrating 
bishops," changed and modified and adulterated the 
form of the Pontifical, and the old English liturgies, 
of Sarum, York, Lincoln and Bangor, and omitted 
in their new Ordinal the prayers and form of the 
Roman Pontifical, already cited, containing what all 
Catholic antiquity regarded as essential to valid or- 
dination. It is indeed too funny for anything, to be 
told that we, with the traditional forms and liturgies 
of the Christian Church from the earliest ages, cannot 
have what is essential to a valid ordination, and what 
is lacking in Cranmer's forms, because, forsooth, we have 
not inserted in our Pontifical, Cosin's corrected and en- 
larged forms, or the words added in 1662 to the Angli- 
can Ordinal. We are again asked, whether we are ig- 
norant that "the Roman Pontifical is modern in many 
particulars, and has been often changed.*^" 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 



149 



The Roman Pontifical is that of Clement VIII. and 
Urban VIII., revised, as we read on its title page, and 
corrected by the illustrious and learned Benedict XIV., 
with additions approved by the Sacred Congregation 
of Rites. Benedict XIV. was born in 1685, and elected 
Pope in 1740, and consequently the authorized edition 
of the Roman Pontifical is comparatively modern. But 
we also know that if at times the Church authorizes a 
new edition of her pontifical and liturgical works, and 
adds some words, and prayers, such as, for instance, 
"Receive the Holy Ghost," which we have shown to 
be a comparatively modern addition, authorized, and 
made by the sanction and approval of the Church an 
integral part of the form, or if she omits some prayers 
and forms of blessing that have fallen into desuetude, 
and thus adapts her ritual to the wants and present 
discipline of the Church, it is not at the dictation of a 
boy-king, or in obedience to a Somerset and a War- 
wick ; it is not in virtue of an act of Parliament en- 
forced by pains and penalties, or through an acknowl- 
edged necessity, because her liturgy was deemed in- 
sufficient for the valid administration of the sacra- 
ments, rendering her orders doubtful, her ministrations 
unsafe, her hierarchy insecure. We know, and this lets 
out the venom of the charge, that, whatever changes, 
additions or omissions have thus been made by her in 
virtue of her own divine right, under warrant and 
sanction of her God-given authority, as a perfect 'spir- 
itual society having power to regulate her own disci- 
pline, manage her own internal affairs, and to enact her 
own laws, they have never affected the substance of 
the sacraments, have never materially or substantially 
altered the sacramental forms. We hold with Benedict 



150 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 

XIV., and the Council of Trent, that Christ has given 
to his Church power to ordain or change any rites or 
ceremonies in the dispensation of the sacraments that 
do not affect their substance, salva illoravi snbstantiay 
but that may contribute to the edification of the peo- 
ple, the utility of the recipient, or the veneration and 
dignity of the sacraments themselves. The matter 
and form appertain to the substance of the sacraments, 
and therefore the matter and form are invariable, and 
the Roman Pontifical of to-day is substantially iden- 
tical, as to the matter and form of Holy Orders, with 
the Leonine, Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, 
with the old English Pontificals, and with the Orien- 
tal liturgies. King Edward's Ordinal on the contrary is 
substantially different from all these, and therefore we 
say : Please, dear sir, to redeem the pledge given in 
these bantering terms : " His (our) most learned Cath- 
olic authors can construct no argument in behalf of 
the Pontifical's present form, which does not equally 
cover our case. This I am prepared to show him at 
large when he presents me with such an argument." 
We flatter ourselves that we have presented such an 
argument, but we beg the gentleman not to refer us, as 
he seems inclined to do, to his ordinary authorities for 
reasons already stated, and which may be found more 
at large in chap, viii., " Ordinal of Edward VI.," by 
Dom. Wilfrid Raynal, O.S.B. We want facts, argu- 
ments and historic documents, and if we refer to and 
use freely, both with and without acknowledgment, 
Catholic authors, particularly Kenrick, Estcourt and 
Raynal, we wish our readers to attach importance or 
weight to their writings only as they find their argu- 
ments convincing, their reasonings conclusive, their con- 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 151 

elusions irresistible, their assertions warranted by the 
records of history, their facts undeniable. We have, 
perhaps, spun out too lengthily this point of the inade- 
quacy of the Edwardine Ordinal, and invalidity of An- 
glican orders, but the vital importance of the subject 
must be our apology. 

We are anxious to conclude this question of Ang- 
lican orders, on which we have expatiated at much 
greater length than we originally designed, but the 
subject grew on us insensibly, especially as we were in 
some sort forced into the discussion of several questions 
in order to expose and refute theological blunderings, 
historical inaccuracies, erroneous statements ctnd 
unscrupulous falsifications of facts, connected with the 
matter in dispute. We need hardly notice again what 
we find again so positively, yet so falsely asserted and 
reiterated : *' The words added in our Ordinal in 1660 
('62 ?) make the old formula more explicit, not a whit 
more sufficient, for the formula itself remains as it was 
in the old Ordinals ; and as it is still in the Romish 
Pontifical." The falsehood of this assertion is already 
proved and patent, but its reiteration is something 
amazing, as anyone who will take the trouble to com- 
pare any of the old, ante-Reformation Sacramentaries, 
and the present Roman Pontifical with the unrevised 
Edwardine Ordinal, will at once see its glaring falsehood. 
''The words, Receive the Holy Ghost," he continues, 
"are used in both (the Roman Pontifical and Edward's 
Ordinal) as sufficient to complete a solemnity which 
preceding words have defined to be the consecration 
of a bisli ip." Now let us remember that, as we before 
declared, the words, " Receive the Holy Ghost," were 
not at all in the older Ordinals, and in the Roman 



152 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



Pontifical they were not used as sufficient to complete 
the consecration of a bishop. These words now used 
in the consecration of a bishop constitute an integral 
part of the form, and the Council of Trent has defined 
that the Holy Ghost is given in Holy Orders, and that 
the bishops say not in vain " Receive the Holy Ghost," 
but the Council has not defined or insinuated that 
these words are the form of the sacrament of orders, 
nor does the Pontifical teach that these words aresuf- 
ficent for the consecration of a bishop. The Church 
has not defined what precise words do consititute the 
sacramental form of Holy Orders and are positively 
essential to its valid administration, and theologians 
have held different opinions on the subject, but all 
hold that in orders, as in baptism, the sacramental 
form is contained in the words or prayers used in the 
application of the matter, and that there must be at 
least a moral union between them, so that whilst the 
minister pronounces the words of the form, he may be 
morally supposed to perform the act denoting the 
special nature of the sacrament which he confers, and 
signifying the special effects produced, and determining 
the special character impressed on the soul, or sacra- 
mental grace infused. 

It will not do, then, for any one following Courayer 
and other Anglican v/riters, to say that words preced- 
ing the form sufficiently determine the meaning of the 
form, and define the solemnity to be the consecration 
of a bishop. Would he acknowledge, for instance, the 
validity of a baptism in which the determining words, 
" I baptize thee," were omitted, on the plea that the 
preliminary Interrogatories, and ceremonies, and 
prayers, sufficiently indicated that it was the sacra- 



THE ORDINAL OF ED WARD. 



153 



ment of baptism which the minister intended to confer ? 
We think not ; at least Catholics would not, and Pope 
Alexander III. has pronounced invalid, baptism in 
which these words "I baptize thee" were omitted, and 
merely the words '' in the name of the Father," etCo, said 
whilst the water was poured ; not, as a learned canonist 
remarks, because these precise words were omitted, for 
the Greeks do not use these identical words, but '' because 
the act which is performed by the minister is not re- 
garded as sufficiently expressive," does not sufficiently 
determine the special object of the sacrament. The 
same eminent divine (von Espen) affirms that Eugenius 
IV., in his famous decree to the Armenians, " clearly 
intimates that the expression of the ministerial act in 
baptism is necessary for its effect ; thus anxiously re- 
quiring that the act which is exercised by the minister 
should be expressed." From this Canon Raynal, from 
whom we largely borrow, argues : *' What has been said 
of the form of Baptism, will hold good in regard to 
Holy Orders, and an expression of the ministerial act 
which determines the special character conferred by 
the imposition of hands, is absolutely necessary for the 
validity of the sacramental forms of the sacred orders." 
But in the form by which Parker was consecrated, or 
in the words, " Receive the Holy Ghost," there is no 
such expression of a ministerial act determining the 
special character conferred, or defining the rite to be 
the consecration of a bishop, and no preceding words 
can supply for this essential defect in the Edwardine 
form. Canon Estcourt produces the testimony of 
Richard Broughton, a Catholic writer, on the Thirty- 
nine Articles in 16^2, wliich bears so strongly on this 
subject of the Angiicaii lorm, which .s so persistently 



154 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



maintained to be the same as that of the Roman Pon- 
tifical, and the same as that on which our own claims to 
be a bishop must depend, that we cannot resist the 
temptation of quoting it : 

*• And these Protestants' form of making their pre- 
tended bishops, is also utterly overthrown. -^ * ^ For 
there is not one singular or privileged thing, sign, cere- 
mony, word or act, that may by probable or possible 
means give episcopal order ; * * -^^ for here is no more 
done or said than was in their making of pretended 
priests or ministers before ; for these, the same were 
their ceremony, and words: 'Receive the Holy Ghost.' 
Here is no material difference ; a bishop is pretended 
consecrator in both alike ; the ceremony of laying on 
of hands is the same ; the words spoken do not differ ; 
in both there is the same sentence and sense. * * * In 
the pretended ordination of bishops there is no power 
at all given, but the party only put in mind or admon- 
ished to stir up that grace, which was in him before — 
the very same words which St. Paul, a'bsent, wrote to 
St. Timothy, long after he had consecrated him priest." 
We do not think it necessary for our purpose, in this 
little treatise, and to justify our rejection of the Anglican 
form, to examine the theological question, whether these 
words, " Receive the Holy Ghost," in the mouth of a 
Catholic bishop, united in faith, and in full accord with 
the Catholic Church regarding Holy Orders, the priest- 
hood, and the Holy Sacrifice, and using otherwise a 
liturgy approved by the Church, and expressing the 
faith of the Church in the sacramental grace and power 
of Holy Orders, would be sufficient, or, in other words, 
whether the form used in the Anglican Church, si nihil 
aliiid obstet, were there nothing else to hinder it, would 



THE ORDINAL OF ED WARD. 



155 



be a valid form. Some Catholic writers affirm it. 
Canon Estcourt is of this opinion, and a writer in the 
'^CatholicWorld' for August, 1874, coincides with Canon 
Estcourt, that, " so far as J:he material words of the 
Edwardine forms go, they are sufficient — i. e., they are 
words capable of being used in a sense in which they 
would be sufficient — but the words are ambiguous." 
These writers have apparently adopted this opinion on 
the strength of a so-called decree of the Holy Office, 
in 1704, approving of certain Abyssinian ordinations, in 
which the abuna, or Abyssinian ordaining prelate, 
passed hurriedly along a line of deacons, laying his 
hands on the head of each and saying, Accipe Spiritunt 
Sanctum, Receive the Holy Ghost. " Canon Estcourt," 
says the writer in the ^^ Catholic World^' " has understood 
the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in their 
decree of 1704, to have ruled that the form, 'Accipe 
Spiritunt Sanctum^ understood in the sense of the 
Abyssinian liturgical books, is valid for the priesthood, 
although, in the particular case, no further expression 
is given to this sense, at least no expression within the 
limits of the form, strictly so called — i. e., '' the verbal 
formula synchronous with the matter." For ourselves, 
we do not see how this decision or answer of the 
Sacred Congregation (which Cardinal Patrizi says is not 
a decree of the Sacred Congregation), in a special case, 
in regard to a solitary deviation from an otherwise ap- 
proved liturgy, can be amplified into a general recog- 
nition of the validity of the form, '^Accipe Spiritunt 
Saitctunty The answer can cover only the case, or solve 
the doubt proposed. Now there is no proof, as far as 
we can see, that the dubium proposed by the mission- 
aries to the Holy Office had reference to the sacra- 



156 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 

mental form, F. Jones asserting that it turned exclu- 
sively on the non-tradition of the instruments, and the 
fact that the bishop did not lay his hands on each of 
the deacons during the whole of the form, but hurried 
along the line, imposing his hands on each only whilst 
pronouncing a part of the- form, or the words, Rcple 
eum SpiritiL Sancto, which words he thinks the mission- 
aries translate, '^Accipe Spiritum Sanctiuny This most 
probably is the correct view and statement of the case 
proposed to the Sacred Congregation, so that the " tal 
modo e fo7'ina' of the dubium may refer to the hurried 
imposition of hands during one phrase, instead of the 
whole of the form, Respice. 

In fact, we do not see how from this so called decree of 
the Sacred Congregation, dated April loth, 1704, after 
the letter of his Eminence Cardinal Patrizi to Cardinal 
Manning, which we find in ''TJie MontJi,'' for August, 
1875, and which we subjoin, can in any way be con- 
strued the sufficiency of the form, '^ Accipe Spiritum 
Sanctum^' the cardinal expressly affirming: '^ This 
S. S. C. never, either explicitly or implicitly, declared 
that the imposition of hands with these only words, 
Accipe SpiritiLin Sanctum^ sufficed for the validity of 
the order of the priesthood." 

I. — LETTER FROM H. E. CARDINAL PATRIZI TO H. E. 
THE CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER. 

'^Domino Cardinali Archiepiscopo Westmonasteriensi. 
' " Eminentissime ac Reverendissime Domine Obs°^^ 
"Litteris diei 24 Augusti, anni nuper clapsi, referebat 
Eminentia Vestra qusestionem isthic exortam inter 
aliquos Scriptores, circa sensum cujusdam, ut appellat, 
"decreti," ab hoc Suprema Congregatione Universalis 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 



157 



Inquisitionis die 10 Aprillis, anni 1704, editi, quod 
valorem respicit ordinationis in quodam Casu Abissi 
norum expletae per verba Accipe Spiritum Sanctum 
manuum impositioni conjuncta, ex eoque Anglicanos 
prsesumere ac jactitare nullum jam posse a Catholicis 
moveri dubium de eorum ordinum validitate. Proinde 
ad anxietates eliminandas, veritatemque securius de- 
fendendam, quaerebat eadem Eminentia Vestra sequen- 
tis dubii declarationem ; scilicet, an, in supra-asserto 
decreto, explicite vel implicite, contineatur doctrinaad 
validitatem ordinis presbyteratus sufficere impositionem 
manuum cum iis dumtaxat verbis Accipe Spiritum 
Sanctum. 

''Jam vero Eminentissimi Patres Cardinales una 
mecum Inquisitores Generales, articulo formaliter ac 
mature discusso, in feria iv. die 21 labentis fnensis, 
rogationi ejusmodi respondendum duxerunt Negative. 
Atque, ad hujusce decreti justitiam protuendam, pauca, 
ex mente Sacri Ordinis, Eminentiae Vestrae innuisse 
sufficiat. Scilicet, ex ipso Coptorum ritu, ut in eorum 
libris Pontificalibus habetur, manifestum esse, ilia verba 
Accipe Spiritum Sanctum non integram form am con- 
stituere, nee sensum documenti, quod ex anno 1704 
profertur, quodque non est decretum Sanctae Congre- 
gationis, uti ex ejus Tabulario patet, alio modo intelli- 
gendum esse nisi quod, penes Coptos, ordinatio pres- 
byter! cum impositione manuum Episcopi, et prolatione 
formae, in antiquo eorum ritu praescriptae, valida sit 
habenda: nunquam vero Sanctam Supremam Congre- 
gationem, sive explicite sive implicite, declarasse ad 
validitatem ordinis presbyteratus sufficere manuum 
imposy'tionem cum his dumtaxat verbis. Accipe Spiri- 
tum Sanctum, 



158 



THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 



" Post hsec, cum me jam mei muneris partes imple- 
visse sciam, superest ut, eo quo par est obsequio, Emin- 
entiae Vestrse manus humillime deosculer. 
" Eminentiae Vestrae — 
'' Romse, die 30 Aprilis, 1875. 

{Sign :) '' Humillimus et devotissimus Servus, 

" C. Card. Patrizi." 

This so-called decision does not then, as the learned 
Canon Estcourt supposes, establish the principle that 
the words, Accipe Spiritmn Sanctum, are sufficient as a 
form of ordination to the priesthood. Cardinal Patrizi 
expressly declares that from the rite of the Copts, as 
found in their Pontifical books, it is manifest that 
those words, Accipe Spiritiim Sanctum^ do not consti- 
tute the integral form, and that the sense of the docu- 
ment published in 1704 is to be understood in no other 
way than that among the Copts the ordination of a 
priest with the imposition of the bishop's hands and 
the pronouncing of the form prescribed in their ancient 
rite is to be held valid. 

However, no one pretends that the Sacred Congre- 
gation sanctioned the form, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum^ 
taken by itself simply, but specificated in the sense of 
the Abyssinian liturgy, as the ''Catholic World'' justly in- 
terprets the mind of Canon Estcourt. But the learned 
canon expressesthishimself so strongly and clearly that 
we must give his own words : " It is perfectly well known 
that even if the prayers prescribed by the Abyssinian 
sacred books are not said, yet that the faith and doc- 
trine of the Abyssinian Church is expressed by those 
prayers, and that it is the same with the faith and 
doctrine of the Catholic Church regarding Holy 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 



159 



Orders and the priesthood. There is no addition made 
to the words which excludes the due and proper sense 
from them, and therefore no doubt can exist about the 
sense in which the words are used in an Abyssinian 
ordination, though the practice is so far short of the 
theory. There is also a certain faith and doctrine ex- 
pressed in the Anglican forms of ordination ; and it is 
not the faith and doctrine of the Catholic Church, but 
that of Luther and other reformers. It is impossible 
to take the words, Accipe Spirititm Sanctum,^ separately 
from the context in which they are found. And the 
context does exclude a due and proper sense, and 
fixes and determines the sense to be contrary to that 
of the Catholic Church. Thus the Abyssinian abuna, 
though he repeats no more than those three words, 
yet, following the traditions of his Church, expresses 
his faith with respect to the sacramental grace and 
power of the order conferred in a manner agreeable 
with that of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, 
the bishop who uses the Anglican form in ordaining, 
is not only prevented from attaching a right sense to 
those words, but openly declares and professes that he 
does not repeat them according to the sense in which 
the Catholic Church receives and uses them.". So 
that even if the material words, '' Receive the Holy 
Ghost," were sufficient in connection with an otherwise 
approved liturgy and authorized ordination rite, the 
Anglican form would be invalid, because the Catholic 
liturgies and the Catholic Ordinals were vitiated for the 
purpose of introducing error. 

'' It is a settled principle with Catholics," says Arch- 
bishop Kenrick, " that no error about the nature or 
efficacy of a sacrament, no positive disbelief of its divine 



l6o ^'t^^ ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 

institution, or any other personal unvvorthiness on the 
part of him who administers it, can deprive such a 
sacrament of its effect, provided sufficient matter, valid 
form, and due intention concur in its administration. 

''But if the matter be omitted, or curtailed of any- 
essential part ; if the form be vitiated, or if ambiguity 
be introduced, for the purpose of introducing error, it 
is no longer a valid means of producing sacramental 
effects." Dr. Newman in a note, written since his con- 
version to the Catholic Church, on an essay written 
whilst a leading spirit of the Anglican communion, 
says: " The consecrations of 1556 were not only facts, 
they were acts ; those acts were not done and over 
once for all, but were only the first of a series of acts, 
done in long course of years ; these acts; too, all of them, 
were done by men of certain positive opinions and in- 
tentions, and none of these opinions and views, from 
first to last, of a Catholic complexion, but on the con- 
trary, erroneous and heretical. And I question whether 
men of those opinions could, by means of a mere rite 
or formulary, however correct in itself, start and con- 
tinue in a religions communion, such as the Anglican, 
a ministerial succession which could be depended on 
as inviolate. I do not see what guarantee is produci- 
ble for the faithful observance of a sacred rite in form, 
matter, and intention, through so long a period, in the 
hands of such administrators." 

I will now adduce one more testimony in confirma- 
tion of this view of the nullity of the Anglican form, 
on account of the bad faith and heterodoxy of its 
framers. Dr. Lee, one of the Buffalo divine's most trusty 
guides and reliable authorities, alleges the celebrated 
Franciscus a Sancta Clara, as an authority in favor of 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. i5i 

,the validity of Anglican orders. Him, then, we shall 
sunnmon, as our last witness to confound Dr. Lee, and 
to demolish the forms of Edward's Ordinal. After 
asserting in explanation of the 36th Article, that : their 
(the Anglican) ordination, for as much as concerns 
their form and matter, will be valid, " si 7iiJiil obstet^' '' if 
tJierc be nothing else to Jiinder f he subjoins: "Not- 
withstanding all this, after a serious and sincere exam- 
ination, I must put this final resolution as a most in- 
dubitable conclusion : according to the clear sense of the 
ancient and present universal Church, their ordinations are, 
ipso jure, invalid!'' After showing that: "The judg- 
ment of the whole Catholic Church was and is, theit 
baptism administered by an Arian intending to oppose 
the Church's sense, that is, not to do what the Church 
doth, by that their imperfect form, would be invalid, 
and by consequence his ordination, though not differ- 
ing essentially from the Catholic form, provided that 
he should hereby sufiQciently manifest his depraved 
sense to be against the truth of Christ's institution," 
he continues : *' The application of this, or this ex- 
plication, is easy to the question of ordination, minis- 
tered by our Protestant bishops ; for though we should 
suppose these forms not to be substantially changed, 
or their derivation of episcopacy to have been origin- 
ally from ours, as they seriously pretend, yet since 
they have changed the church forms, de industria, as 
the second sort of Arians did, to declare that they do 
not what the Church intends, and in pursuit thereof 
have solemnly decreed against the power of sacrificing 
and consecrating, that is in the sense of the old and 
present Catholic Church, of changing the elements of 
bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, our 



1 62 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 

Lord, as appears in the 28th and 31st Articles, it evi- 
dently concludes that they never did or could validly 
ordain priests, and consequently bishops, having, as 1 
say, expressed clearly the depravation of their intentions 
in order to the first and principal part of ordination, 
which consisteth in the power, super Corpus Christi 
veruvi, of sacrificing and consecrating his true body, by 
them professedly denied, and the sacrifice declared a 
pernicious imposture (a strange expression) in their 
articles, never repealed or mitigated in any synod." 

After ridiculing the pretension that, even if there 
were a flaw in the first consecration, a valid succession 
was transmitted in after times, as if "they could derive 
a succession per saltuin, as from a great grandfather, 
without a father," he concludes with this argument : 
'^AU ordinations, celebrated in a form different from 
the Church, with an intention, sufficiently expressed, 
of opposition to her sense, are invalid according to the 
definitions of the general councils cited (Nice and 
Aries). But their ordinations are such, ergo." From 
this extract it is plain, as Canon Estcourt remarks, 
from Vv'hom we ha\'c abridged it, that this Vvould-be 
witness to the validity of x^nglican orders, rejects them 
most explicitly and roundl}^ even when conceding that 
the forms may be sufficient in themselves. " yet, as 
they have been changed, de industria, to declare that 
the ordainers do not intend what the Church intends, 
the ordination cannot be valid." We have now done 
with the main question at issue, the legitimate succes- 
sion and valid orders of the Ancrlican and Protestant 
Episcopal bishops, having demonstrated fully, at least 
we think so, that Anglicans ha\'e no claims to either. 

Dr. Lee himself, the champion of Anglican orders. 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 163 

is too fair and too conversant with the subject to 
simply pooh-pooh the objections of CathoHcs. We will 
then let him have the closing words on Anglican 
ordinations. " There are," he says, in his late work, " cer- 
tain difficulties, which, it must be frankly allowed, have 
always been felt by learned Roman Catholics and Orien- 
tals, with regard to the fact of Parker's consecration and 
which must be duly faced and removed, before any re- 
cognition of the validity of English ordinations can be 
reasonably expected from the Eastern or Western 
Churches. Anglicans must not remain contented with 
assertions, which appear to satisfy themselves, but be 
prepared with arguments yind conclusions, which will 
convince their opponents." (Vol. i. p. 99). ''The 
modern Easterns," continues the same frank and able 
writer, "though personally civil and polite enough, 
frequently, repudiate our ordinations with scorn. The 
late archbishop of Syros and Tenos, even more civil - 
than some of his brethren, reordained absolutely the 
Rev. James Chrystal, an American clergyman of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church ; while the Servian archi- 
mandrete, who once gave Holy Communion to a 
London clergyman, the Rev. Wm. Denton, who had 
rendered good service to the Servian Church, was 
most severely reprimanded by authority, and made to 
give a promise in writing, that he would never repeat that, 
his canonical offense ; and this in a formal document, 
which described the Church of England as ' unortho- 
dox,' and Protestant, and the clergyman in question as 
'without the priesthood.'" We are not alone, then, 
in questioning x-^nglican and Protestant Episcopal 
orders. 

Nor is it owing to the gross ignorance of Roman . 



164 '^^^ ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND 

Catholic theologians, that succession and orders in the 
Anglican establishment are rejected, for Dr. Lee, with 
praiseworthy candor, asserts : "At Rome every care 
is taken to arrive at the truth, so that the inadequate 
defences regarded as sufficient and satisfactory by some 
at home, will never pass muster, in presence of the 
skilled theologians of the eternal city. A huge assump- 
tion, as Roman Catholic theologians maintain, that all 
was right in Parker's case, is of course easily enough 
made ; but detailed proof of facts, and satisfactory re- 
plies to objections often give trouble, entail research, 
and yet remain insufficient for the purpose." (Vol. i. 
p. 200.) And yet, in spite of his close study of facts 
and patient research. Dr. Lee is Lorced to fall back on 
what he styles the w^r^^/ argument in favor of Anglican 
orders. But let us hear him further: "Of course to 
any English churchman, of the Oxford school, the pro- 
ceedings in question will no doubt be read with some 
pain. It is no easy task to show that the revived doc- 
trines and Catholic practices, now so largely current in 
every diocese of our beloved country, and, many of 
them, so generally popular, were utterly repudiated by 
the dismal prelates, whose violent and heretical lan- 
guage is so awful in itself and so disquieting to dwell 
upon ; and whose destructive labors it is so distasteful 
to put on record. Men who in a spirit of self-sacrifice 
now repair churches, cleanse the font, rebuild the 
broken-down altar of the Lord, beautify His sanctuary, 
adorn with pictured pane and mosaic representation 
the chancel wall — who open the restored churches for 
the daily office, who — in the face of secular and sense- 
less 'judgments' — believe in baptismal regeneration, 
practise confession, pray for the departed, and have 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 



165 



been led, step b^^step, to restore the Christian sacrifice 
and Eucharistic adoration ; and who, furthermore, look 
upon themselves, now clothed in sacerdotal garments, 
and standincr facing the crucifix at lighted altars, as 
sacrificing priests of the New Law — can surely have 
but little in common with the vulgar anti-Catholic 
bishops of Queen Elizabeth's day, Avhose profane and 
awful words, when read at a distance of three centuries 
or more, make a reverent person shudder; and the 
dark records of whose blasphemies and active wicked- 
ness, when calmly faced, sends a thrilling shiver through 
the heart of a Christian, and makes everv decent Ene- 
lishm^n — unparalyzed by indifference, and not choked 
by false science — blush for shame that such officials 
ever belonged to so moderate and respectable an in- 
stitution as the Church of England by law established 
now appears." (Vol. i. p. 272-4.) 

The above we have borrowed from an able article in 
the '' Liverpool Catholic Times,'' and although somewhat 
lengthy we will allow the writer to continue his review 
of Dr. Lee's v/ork in his own words: 

'' From these data, Dr. Lee," in several places, but es- 
pecially in his introductory essay on 'The present 
position of the Established Church,' draws a ' moral' 
argument in favor of Anglican Orders. ' It is self- 
evident,' he writes, ' that the moral argument in favor 
of their validity is very strong, perhaps stronger than 
either the theological or historical argument. When 
' the frightful state of degradation into which the 
National Church during Elizabeth's reign had been 
brought, is honestly contemplated ; and when the strik- 
ing contrast between its position then and its altered 
state now is dulv realized — the manner in which so 



1 56 '^^^^^ KCMAX PONTIFICAL AND 

much that had been then cast away as valueless is now 
sought after and has been once more secured ; we may 
reasonably infer (though there be no exact precedent 
nor perfect parallel's in past histor}^ for the complex 
character and unique position of the Established Church 
of England)' that, as divine grace has never been with- 
drawn from her crippled rulers, so an inherent and es- 
sential distinction between clergy and laity has been' 
in the main consistently and continually remarked and 
admitted.' (Pp. 51-52.) 

" We give the argument in the writer's own words, so 
as not to deprive it of any weight which may legiti- 
mately attach to it. But we cannot but think that Dr. 
Lee's own volumes are its completest refutation. Angli- 
cans are in the habit of assuming that the ' Reforma- 
tion' in England essentially differed from that on the 
Continent and in Scotland in certain respects, and, inter 
alia, in the retention of a belief in, and respect for, the 
grace of Holy Orders; and then (when historical diffi- 
culties are raised) they fall back upon the sentiment 
that God would never have permitted the lapse of sac- 
ramental grace through the accidental oversight of any 
essential. Dr. Lee makes short work, however, of any 
such assumption. He shows the authors and abettors 
of the New Church as being to the full as blasphemous 
and sacrilegious, as coarse, as immoral, and altogether 
as Satanic, as the Continental ' Reformers,' with the 
superadded malice of abominable and anti-Christian 
subserviency to the crown. So far, then,' the moral 
argument against Anglican orders is as strong as 
against Presbyterian or Lutheran ones. In other words, 
as, upon Anglican equally as upon Catholic principles, 
we know that God permitted the Kirk of Scotland and 



THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 



167 



the Continental Protestant Communions to have lost 
the grace of orders and sacraments, there is no reason 
(in the absence of direct proof) to believe that He dealt 
otherwise witli the equally guilty and sacrilegious 
rulers of tlie Elizabethan Church, The weiglit of proba- 
bility is that God should, rather than that 'He should 
not, have withdrawn His sacraments from' the sac- ■ 
rilegious grasp of men who were wont to style the 
Blessed Sacrament — JiorrcschpMS refcrentes' — (We can- . 
not bring ourselves down to quote the low and shock- 
ing language used by the reformers towards the Blessed' 
Sacrament): "who in all things were the subservient 
tools of a monster who, whilst claiminf^ more than 
Pontifical honors, caused the Corpus Christi canopy to 
be borne over her at Cambridge, and who ended by 
making the hearing or singing of Mass a crime punish- 
able by fine, imprisonment and death. 

'* But the moral argrument aminst Anglican orders is 
still stronger when we consider the attitude of the 
Elizabethan bishops themselves towards orders. One 
and all they repudiate any such belief in ordination as 
obtains among Ritualists, or even among moderate 
Anglicans. They denounced the sacrament of order 
as fully, as consistently, and as vehemently as they 
denounced the Mass, the Real Presence, or Extreme 
Unction. Again and again they admitted men to cure 
of souls who had never received episcopal ordination, 
and allowed preachers to occupy benefices who refused 
to administer either Baptism or 'the Supper,' and 
were known as ' no sacrament ministers.' They were 
quite content to liold their posts solely from the 
queen, to be 'bishops by act of Parliament.' And 
when, later or., an attempt was made toclaim for them 



1 68 PONTIFICAL AND ORDINAL. 

some kind of spiritual jurisdiction as successors of the 
Apostles, they were promptly told that their jurisdiction 
was derived from the crown, and that any attem.pt to 
claim independent jurisdiction would lay them open 
to the penalties of premunire. Even Hooker, whom 
Dr. Lee rightly praises as 'the first person among 
the English ministers who, by the general soundness of 
his principles, the clearness of his thoughts, and the 
ability with which he set them forth, began to stem 
the tide of confusion, innovation, and novelty,' never 
adopted the Catholic belief as to orders, and actually 
regarded Dr. Adrian de Saravia — 'ordained abroad 
by presbyters, if at all,' — as a fit and capable confessor, 
and so employed him upon his death-bed, receiving 
also the Communion at his hands. No doubt the 
Caroline divines, like their successors of the Oxford 
school, succeeded in raising the standard of sacramental 
belief, but like the changes in the Ordinal, due, no 
doubt, to the influence of their teaching, such improve- 
ments came too late to affect the main question." 



CONCL USION. 



169 



*XIL 

CONCLUSION/ 

i have now come to the end of ourHttle work, 
and it only remains for us to summarize the 
main points on which we touched, and the conclusions 
which we reached. We have endeavored to show, with 
what success our readers will judge, that the line of 
Apostolical succession has been hopelessly broken be- 
tween the Primitive Church, and the Anglican and 
Protestant Episcopal Churches, and that every at- 
tempt to bridge the chasm between Catholic England 
under the supremacy of the Popes, and the Anglican es- 
tablishment under the Tudors, between Cardinal Pole, 
last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury, and Matthew 
Parker, the first link of the new line forged by the 
despotic iron hand of Elizabeth, has been vain. Suppos- 
ing the Lambeth Register to be a genuine, authentic 
document, the form used at Parker's consecration was 
confessedly that of the Edwardine Ordinal, devised 
towards the end of the year 1549. The form prescribed 
in the Roman Pontifical was abolished by act of Parlia- 
ment (3 Edward VI., c. 2), and the newly devised form 
made obligatory after April ist, 1 5 50, and added to Book 
of Common Prayer by another act of Parliament in 
1 5^52 (5 and 6 Edward VI.). According to the Lambeth 



170 



CONCL USION. 



Register, Parker was consecrated by this form, which 
w^as so plainly inadequate and invalid that acts of Parlia- 
ment were deemed necessary to supply its defects, and 
in the year 1602, one hundred years later, the form 
was again changed, obviously to remedy deficiencies 
pointed out. by Catholics and Dissenters, and perhaps, 
too, to satisfy a reactionary movement inside the es- 
tablishment itself towards Catholic doctrine and prac- 
tices, though its defenders stoutly af^rm that the 
change was not made to add to the validity, but to 
the dignity of the rite. Be that as it may, the form is 
intrinsically insufficient to confer valid consecration. 
Matthew^ Parker, therefore, never was a bishop, and 
consequently could not validly consecrate others. Be- 
sides, grave doubts and suspicions attach to the Lam- 
beth Register, and still graver doubts are entertained 
as to the fact of Barlow's consecration, and the slen- 
der thread on which Anglican orders rest must be pain- 
fully apparent to those who claim that the assistant 
bishops at Parker's consecration, and at some subse- 
quent consecration, would even suffice to supply for 
Barlow's non-consecration. 

What thick mists and dark clouds of suspicions, doubts 
and uncertainties hang over the orders of the Church of 
England, even if it could be conceded — which it cannot 
consistently with the doctrinal teachings of the Chris- 
tian Church — that the form was a vaild one. But Apos- 
tolical succession requires not only valid orders but 
lavviul mission ; this has been proved from the teaching 
and practice of the early Christian Church ; this is held 
by Anglicans and Episcopalians. This must, how- 
ever, be ever carefully borne in mind, that the power of 
order, and the right to exercise that order, jurisdiction, 



CONCL USION. 



I7E 



mission, the assignment of charge or people over 
which that power may be exercised, are very different 
things, and do not necessarily go together. A bishop 
from the time of his appointment, even before "bis 
consecration, has jurisdiction, over his diocese, thoiigli 
he may exercise no exclusively episcopal functions, do 
no act requiring the episcopal order and character. 
He may govern his flock as a legitimate pastor, and 
administer his diocese and empower other bishops ta 
ordain , priests and officiate in episcopal functions. 
And a validly and lawfully consecrated bishop maybe 
Avithout episcopal jurisdiction, may have no charge^ nO' 
diocese to' govern. Auxiliary and co-adjutor bishops 
have only such limited jurisdiction as the titular bishop 
or ordinary of the diocese may grant them, and nat 
unfrequently, in case of the absence or death of tiie 
titular bishop, the administration is in the hands of 
a priest, a vicar-general, for instance, and he givcis 
jurisdiction to the lawfully consecrated auxiliarj^ 
bishop. Hovv^ often do I here ordain priests for other 
dioceses and confer on them all the powers of their 
priestly order, but I cannot give them jurisdiction. 
That belongs to their own bishop. Only, then, a law- 
ful ecclesiastical superior can impart ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction, and only valid orders and jurisdictioHj 
transmitted in an unbroken line irom the days of the 
Apostles to our own time, can constitute Apostolical 
succession. 

Granted, then, that Barlow was a regularly conse- 
crated bishop, and that he, in the Lambeth chapel^ 
actually consecrated Parker with valid matter and 
form, even with the intention of the Church, and agree- 
ably to the Roman Pontifical, from whom does he 



jy2 CONCLUSION. 

(Parker) get jurisdiction? What ecclesiastical super- 
ior assigns him a charge? gives him the right to exer- 
cise the power of his episcopal order? who gives him 
charge of the diocese of Canterbury? Not Barlow, nor 
Scorey, nor Coverdale, nor Hodgkins ; one, according 
to the Register, bishop elect of Chichester ; one, bishop 
elect of Hereford ; one, bishop elect of Exeter, and the 
fourth suffragan of Bedford. What right had they in the 
diocese of Canterbury ? How could they confer jurisdic- 
tion on the archbishop from whom they themselves were 
to be confirmed and to receive a mission and right to ex- 
ercise their episcopal orders ? Not from the Pope, who 
atterly rejects his pretensions, and excommunicates him 
as a schismatic and heretic. Not from the Pope, whose 
authority he repudiates and forswears. From Queen 
Eh'zabeth, then ? Yes, this is his only and last resource. 
Here, then, comes the claim of royal, spiritual suprem- 
acy or headship over the Church of England, started 
by her royal father, asserted by her royal brother, and 
now exercised by herself, and thus, in virtue of the 
powers conferred by queen and Parliament, is Parker 
iirst Anglican archbishop of the Church by law estab- 
lished, and thus from the commencement is the fatal 
defect, the disastrous break in the chain of Apostoli- 
cal succession. And it is well said : '' that as original sin 
is not done away with by distance from Adam, so 
this original defect of jurisdiction cannot be supplied 
by length of time, quod ab initio nullum est, tractu tern- 
prris nan convalescit.'" 



MISSTATEMENTS OF CATHOLIC FAITH 

AND 

NUMEROUS CHARGES 

AGAINST THE CliUKCH AKl) HOLY SEE, 

CORRECTED AND REFUTED. 
BY 

S. V. RYAN, BISHOP OF BUFFALO. 
•PART 11. 



CONTENTS. 

I. — Introductory i 

II. — The Ephesine Succession. 4 

III. — Henry VIII, — To whom he belongs 11 

IV. — The new Liturgy — Book of Common Prayer, . . 16 

V. — New Anglican Ordinal. 19 

VI. — Clement's Dispensation to Henry 21 

VII, — Equivocation — Authority of Saints and Doctors of 

the Church ; . 23 

VIII. — Papal Infallibility 32 

IX. — Popes Liberius and Honorius, 47 

X. — Honorius Vindicated 52 

XI. — St. Gregory the Great claiming and exercising 

Papal Supremacy 62 

XII. — Catholic Bishops not Simple Presbyters or mere 

Vicars of the Pope. 74 

XIII.— Teachings of the Ancient Fathers Vindicated . 81 

XIV, — Canons of Nice and Ephesus 86 

XV. — The Catholic Doctrine Regarding Ecclesiastical 

Jurisdiction 93 



MISSTATEMENTS OF CATHOLIC FAITH 

AND 

NUMEROUS CHARGES AGAINST THE CHURCH 
AND HOLY SEE, CORRECTED AND REFUTED. 



•I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 



I HAD fully resolved not to notice the many irrele- 
vant questions, groundless and false assertions pro- 
fusely scattered through the pages of the little 
pamphlet, " Catholics and Roman Catholics," by ''An 
Old Catholic," to which the articles substantially re- 
produced in the preceding pages, and originally written 
for the " Catholic Union,'' were intended to reply. 
However, as the specious and misleading statements,, 
put forward with a certain air of plausibility and con- 
fidence might, if left unchallenged, impose on those 
who have no access to original documents or works of 
reference, I have, on second thought, deemed it in- 
cumbent on me, in the interest of truth and Catholic 
faith, to rectify the principal m^isstatements of " Old 
Catholic," even at the risk of swelling this little 
publication to unexpected proportions. 

I 



2 IN TROD L/C TOR Y. 

The discussion of these matters will, in my opinion, 
prove how easily people may be imposed on by un- 
grounded statem.ents, how cautious we should be in 
giving credence to authorities cited at second-hand, and 
how sadly deficient in accurate information regarding 
the doctrines, traditions and history of the Church even 
intelligent and otherwise well-educated Churchmen 
often are whose reading and studies, ministerial labors 
and professional duties seem, to be directed to the single 
point of obscuring the claims of the Cathohc Church, or 
deterring others from the cahn, dispassionate, thought- 
ful investigation of the sam.e. Of such we can only 
say, in the language of one whom the grace of God 
and light of the Divine Spirit enabled to rise above 
the prejudices of his early education : " Prejudice is 
always obstinate, but no prejudice is so wilfully stub- 
born as that which is professional. It is bad enough, 
in any case, that the mind should be settled in od- 
posil-ion to the truth, but when a man has made it the 
special business of his life to oppose and controvert 
that truth, his intelligence becomes so fortified by his 
will, as to be almost inaccessible. The citadel of his 
heart is well nigh impregnable. '^' "'^ '^' His mind is 
systematically w\arped. He is trained to reason from 
false principles. He becomes, perhaps, by sheer habit, 
the champion of untruth." (" The Invitation Heeded :" 
Dr. Kent Stone.) This may explain, and if not excuse, 
in some degree extenuate the blind, unreasoning pre- 
judices of men who are schooled into bitter hostility to 
the Catholic Church, and forced by their position and 
profession^al duties to repudiate her as the true and 
legitimate spouse of Christ, to reject herauthority and 
<|eny her identity with the Apostolic Church, simply 



IN TROD UC TORY. ^ 

because these claims annihilate all their own titles, brand 
them as illegitimate, spurious, counterfeit. Yet we do 
not presume to judge how far they are responsible for 
errors which they have inherited and prejudices which 
they have unconsciously imbibed, religious predilections 
and affinities naturally springing from circumstances 
over which they could have no control, and hence we 
disclaim any personal feeling, most sincerely profess 
to be actuated by motives of Christian charity and love 
of truth. And If In anything we say we appear to be 
pointed and personal, It Is because of the necessity 
of meeting particular charges, or misleading and in- 
jurious Insinuations against Catholic faith and practice. 



4 



THE EP HE SINE SUCCESSION. 



11. 

THE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. 

HE first archbishop of Canterbury was conse- 
crated at Aries in France (597), and thus intro- 
duced the Ephesine succession from St. John, through 
Irenaeus and Photinus." (Note i. Catholics and non- 
Catholics.) We have answered already that Augustine 
was consecrated bishop at Aries by Virgilius, acting as 
legate and vicar of Pope St. Gregory, but the title 
and privileges and jurisdiction of archbishop were 
afterwards accorded to him by Gregory, Pope of Rome, 
not by Virgilius of Aries, who had, as we shall presently 
see, only such jurisdiction as Gregory granted him in 
Gaul. Lingard, in his ''Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon 
Church," says : "Gregory, whose zeal already predicted 
the entire conversion of the octarchy, commanded it 
to be divided into two ecclesiastical provinces, in each 
of which twelve suffragan bishops should obey the 
superior jurisdiction of their metropolitan." Again, as 
clear proof that not only the new Anglo-Saxon con- 
verts with their bishops and archbishops, but also the 
ancient British Church, acknowledged the authority of 
the same Roman Pontiff, Lingard says: "Gregory, 
treading in the footsteps of his predecessor, Celestine, 
who two centuries before had appointed the monk 
Palladius to the government of the Scottish Church, 



l^HE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. 



5 



invested Augustine with an extensive jurisdiction over 
all the bishops of the Britons." To show still further 
what little truth there is in the assertion that the Pope 
'' could never assert even a patriarchal authority over 
England," let us hear Dr. Lingard still further: "Au- 
gustine himself preferred Canterbury to London ; and 
the nnetropoliticai dignity was secured to the former 
by the rescripts of succeeding Pontiffs." Again, Pope 
Vitalian placed Theodore, an aged monk, in the see of 
Canterbury, and " invested him with an extensive juris- 
diction, similar to tliat which Gregory had conferred on 
St. Augustine." 

But let us now see how the archbishop of Aries, who 
consecrated Augustine, acknowledged the authority and 
supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, Gregory the Great, 
over the churches of Gaul. In the year 595, two years 
before he consecrated Augustine, Virgilius wTote, and 
had King Childebert II. write, to Gregory, asking the 
pallium and the dignity of vicar of the Apostolic See, 
with which the greater part of his predecessors had 
been honored. In the month of August of the same 
year, Gregory writes to him (L. 5, Epist. liii.) granting 
his request, and among other things says : " I am very 
far from suspecting that in asking the use of the pal- 
lium and the vicarship of the Apostolic See, you 
thought only of procuring for yourself a passing power 
and an exterior decoration. I prefer to believe that 
knowing — for no one can ignore it — whence the faith 
was propagated over Gaul, you wished in addressing 
yourself to the Apostolic See, according to ancient 
custom, to act iike'a good son, who has recourse to 
the bosom of the Church, his mother." He concludes 
his letter thus: ''We establish your fraternity our 



6 THE EP HE SINE SUCCESSION. 

vicar in the churches of the kingdom of our most ex- 
cellent son, Childebert, without prejudice to the rights 
of the metropolitans. We send you also the pallium, 
which you will make use of only in the church and 
during the Mass. If any bishop wishes to take a long 
journey, he will not do it without .permission of your 
holiness. If any question of faith, or any other dififi- 
cult affair come up, you will assemble twelve bishops 
to take cognizance of it. If it cannot be decided, you 
will refer the judgment to us." He wrote at the same 
time, in the same sense, to the bishops, exhorting 
them to submit to the new vicar of the Apostolic 
See, as the Angels of Heaven, though without sin, 
are subordinate one to another ; and to King Childe- 
bert, begging him to support by his authority what he 
had regulated in favor of Virgilius, and for the sake of 
God and St. Peter to cause the decrees of the Apos- 
tolic See to be observed in his states. (Works of 
S. G., L. 5, Epist. liv. et Iv.) This, I should say, would 
make the great St. Gregory, in the 6th century justly 
styled the Apostle of England, a good enough Pope of 
the 19th century. But of this we will have more to say 
hereafter. Now we are prepared to examine the ques- 
tion of the " Ephesine succession from St. John, through 
.Irenaeusand Photinus." We should have said, through 
Photinus and Irenseus, for the latter succeeded the 
former in the see of Lyons, A. D. 177. 

Now, we would greatly desire to see any one trace 
the succession of Virgilius of Aries to St. Photinus of 
Lyons, and then trace St. Photinus to St. John, in or- 
der to bring the Ephesine succession down to the 
bishop of Western New York. It is simply ridiculous 
to talk ab:v,-it the Ephesine succession, and no one fa- 



THE KPIIESINE SUCCESSIOiV. y 

miliar with ecclesiastical history, or with those saiirtly 
and historic names of the ancient Clvurch of France 
could commit himself to such an absurdity. The 
see of Aries was founded by bishops sent directly from 
Rome. St. Trophimus, its first bishop, was sent, ac- 
cording to St. Gregory of Tours, from Rome to Aries 
in the year 250, during the reign of Decius, and the 
Pontificate of Pope Fabian. Later French writers 
maintain that he was sent by St. Peter himself, during 
the reign of the Emperor Claudius, and in proof here- 
of, they cite a letter of nineteen bishops, written to 
Pope Leo, praying him to restore to the metropolitan 
see of Aries the privileges which had been wrested 
from. it. ^* It is a m.atter w^ell known," the letter goes 
on to say, " to all Gaul, and to the Holy Roman 
Church, that Aries, the first city of Gaul, has the 
honor of having received the faith from St. Peter 
through Bishop Trophimus, and that it spread thence 
to the other provinces of Gaul." These particulars we 
have taken from the excellent English translation of 
Alzog's " Universal Church History," by the Jamented 
Dr. Pabisch and Rev. Thos. S. Byrne (vol. i., page 246). 
Whether the translator's learned observations will con- 
vince the reader that Aries owes its foundation to the 
Prince of the Apostles or not, the discussion proves 
conclusively that Aries does not derive its succession, 
its orders or its mission from Lyons or from Ephesus, 
but from Rome, and that Virgil ius goes back through 
Trophimus to either Fabian or Peter, and not through 
Irenaius or Photinus to St. John. But now, suppose 
we get to Lyons, and to L'enseus, w^ho succeeded St. 
Photinus, martyred in 177, how can we find our way to 
Ephesus and St. John? 



"S THE EP HE SINE SUCCESSION. 

RevAlban Butler tells, us on the authority of St. 
Gregory of Tours, that Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and 
disciple of St. John, and ordained by him, sent St. 
Irenaeus to Lyons. But he was not yet a priest, but 
was ordained a priest of the Church of Lyons by St. 
Photinus, its first bishop, to whom he succeeded. 
Though a disciple of St. Polycarp, from whom he de- 
rived his doctrine, there is not the slightest proof or 
pretence that he exercised his orders, or his mission 
under other authority than that of Rome, and as an 
unanswerable proof that even then, in the second cen- 
tury, the Churches of Gaul, and the Church of Lyons 
in particular, acknowledged the supreme authority of 
the Bishop of Rome, St. Irensus was actually sent by 
the Church of Lyons, as we learn from Eusebius and 
•St. Jerome, to entreat Pope Eleutherius not to cut the 
Orientals off from communion with the Church on ac- 
count of their difference about the celebration of 
Kaster. But does St. Irenaeus himself appeal to the 
Hphesine succession to prove the truth of his doctrine 
■and the Apostolicity of his faith and his lawful descent 
•from the Apostles? Li his third book (Contra hereses, 
■chap, iii.), he says that most assuredly the Apostles de- 
livered the truth and the mysteries of faith to their 
successors, and to them we must go to learn the same, 
but especially " to the greatest Church and most an- 
cient and known to all, founded at Rome by the two 
most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, which retains 
the traditions received from themi and derived through 
■a succession of bishops down to us. For with this 
Church, on account of the more powerful principality, 
it is necessary that every Church, that is, the fiiithful 
who are in every direction, should agree." (^S. Ircr,., L. 
3, c. iii.) 



THE EP HE SINE SUCCESSION. 9 

He then enumerates the Pontiffs from Peter to 
Eleutherius, then reigning, and to this succession in the 
See of Rome, and not to the Ephesine succession, does 
Irenseus appeal. To the samiC did St. Augustine ap- 
peal. To the same Apostolic See do we appeal, repeat- 
ing again that the See of Rome is the only Apostolic 
See, whence it is at all possible for Christian prelate 
or priest to trace his Apostolical pedigree and 
descent. Happy, then, for our episcopal claimant of 
Apostolical succession if he can " show his line going 
direct to Rome, by many points," even if, as he con- 
fesses, '' it is just there that the greatest confusion 
occurs; so that we do not think much of it." 

LINKS OF ANGLICAN SUCCESSION OF UNSAVORY ODOR. 

Of course, since he must recur to the Popes for his suc- 
cession, it will be his business, not ours, to determine 
which of the three rival Popes was the true Pope when 
Gregory XH. consecrated Chichele. As he cannot 
again claim succession through Aries to Ephesus, he 
must go to Rome for all his right and title to be a 
" corporate witness," and in his desperate attempt to 
get there, vaulting with a bound the wide and deep 
chasm separating Parker from Pole, he goes through 
Scorey (throvv^ing Barlow overboard) and Cranmer to 
Beaufort, of whom he says : " I have now reached the 
name of one of the worst characters in the Anglican 
succession." Strange that he should stop in this un- 
savory spot, yet he thinks that he ought not be expected 
to go further, " for Beaufort was just the kind of a 
man to please a Pope," and hence I suppose a good 
enough man to transmit Anglican orders. As, how- 
ever, he mentions, and very earnestly, that : " The sue- 



10 



THE EP HE SINE SUCCESSION. 



cession by which Christ Himself ' came in the flesh/ is 
disfigured by miany unworthy names, besides that of 
Rahab ; and the Scriptures have reached us through 
many unworthy hands," I am saved the trouble of 
defending or justifying those Popes '' whose abominable 
lives," he tells us, " were the by-w^ord of their times." 
Impartial history has done tardy justice to many of the 
maligned Pontiffs of the middle ages, but the subject 
matter under discussion debars me from entering more 
lengthily into the history of these ages and these Pon- 
tiffs, nor have I the slightest inclination to shield any of 
the very few unworthy occupants of the Pontifical throne 
from merited censure. But neither the Church nor the 
Papacy is responsible for their personal views, nor is the 
purity of Christian doctrines blackened or defiled by the 
unchristian lives of those who neglect the teachings of 
the Church, whether they be of high or low degree, 
whether simple faithful, or masters in Israel. "The 
Scribes and Pharisees have sitten on the chair of 
Moses. All things, therefore, whatsoever they shall 
say to you, observe and do, but according to their 
works, do ye not ; for they say and do not." (Matt, 
xxiii. 2, 3.) At least after the admissions made 
above, objections of this kind will come wdth very bad 
grace from those v/ho own descent from immoral char- 
acters, and from, a line disgraced by Pontiffs " com- 
pared with whom Henry VIII. is almost pure." 



HENRY Vni.— TO WHOM HE BELONGS. \\ 



III. 

HENRY VIII. — TO WHOM HE BELONGS. 

JUST here we may as well remark that " Old Catho- 
lic" is not in love with the first royal Head of the 
Anglican Church, and has '' no disposition to take him. 
off of the hands of those to whom he exclusively be- 
longs — the Roman Catholics." Well, we confess lie 
was once a Roman Catholic, and a staunch champion 
of the Papacy, and from a Pope received the title of 
'^Defender of the Faith," and that " he never fully de- 
serted his faith ; but he allowed his passion to blind his 
eyes and impel him to the greatest of scandals." 

Then he severed himself from Rome, then he re- 
jected the authority of the Pope, then he started the 
*' Church of' England as by law established," and had 
himself proclaimed its head by a subservient Parlia- 
ment and a weak, servile clergy ; he threw off spiritual 
allegiance to the Pope, imposed tlie oath of royal 
supremacy on the English realm, and thus started what 
Edward and Elizabeth afterwards worked into shape; 
and that impartial secitlar authority in the ''Saturday Re- 
view'' who ventures to v/rite that, *' there is a perfect 
legal and historical identity, so to speak, of person^ 
between the Church of England before the Reforma- 
tion and the Church of England after the Reformation," 
goes very near establishing in our minds his own 



12 HENRY V III.— TO WHOM HE BELONGS. 

identity with the gentleman who quotes him, and w^ho 
says, '^ that Henry merely contrnued the Church as he 
found it," and " as for her (Queen Elizabeth) estab- 
lishing the Church of England in any sense other than 
that in which it Avas the law of the land under the 
Plantagenets and the Papacy, is a very ignorant mis- 
take." In both, there is such assurance, such defiance 
of history, and implicit reliance on the ignorance of 
their readers, that we can hardly go w^'ong in tracing 
them to the same source, and assigning them the same 
paternity. Queen Mary, we are again told, " estab- 
lished the Roman hierarchy by law, ' by queen and 
Parliament,' w'hile Henry never did anything of the 
kind." True, indeed, Henry never did anything of the 
kind, because he found the Roman hierarchy existing 
in England not only since Augustine came from Rome 
to convert the Angli, but ever since a Pope sent the 
first missionaries to convert the ancient Britons — a 
Roman hierarchy, exercising its authority under the 
jurisdiction and in the com.munion of the holy Roman 
See, until by legal enactment, by king and Parlia- 
ment, he and his son Edward se\'ered that^ commun- 
ion cemented b}' the tradition of ages, by im- 
memorial usages, arrogating to themselves spiritual 
jurisdiction over the realm, and not only appointing, 
but confirming, emipowering, and even by newly-devised 
forms consecrating a new^ hierarchy, thus establishing 
a New Church, whose very legal title, the name im- 
posed on it at its birth — not Church of England, 
which St. Gregory recognized, and of which he is 
justly styled the Apostle — but '' Church of England 
by law established," belies its claim to Apostolical 
origin, stamps it as a royal and parliamentary founda- 
tion, a modern invention, a sect. 



HENRY VIII.— TO WHOM HE BELONGS. 



13 



Mary's attempt was then, not to erect the Roman hier- 
archy by law, but to repeal the laws enacted in the two 
previous reigns, and to restore the Church of England 
to the condition in which it was before " Henry's 
passions blinded him and impelled him to the greatest 
of scandals." " Henry belonged to the Roman Catho- 
lics." True, so did Cranmer once, so did Calvin, so 
did Luther, so did Pelagius, so did Donatus, so did Arius, 
so did all the heretics of ancient times,but they fell away, 
they apostatized, they left the only ark of safety, the 
One, Holy, and Apostolic Church. The infamous traitor 
Judas was once a disciple, nay, even a chosen Apostle 
of our Lord, and you may as v/ell charge our Lord and 
His Apostles and the Christian name with the infamy 
and fearful crime of that arch-traitor, as to make the 
Catholic Church responsible for the crimes of Henry 
after he severed himself from the communion of the 
Holy See, and had himself proclaimed Supreme in 
spirituals as well as temporals. It is true, and no 
Catholic, as far as v/e know, will deny what the late 
Welby Pugin asserts, that England presents " a fearful 
example of a Catholic nation betrayed by a corrupted 
Catholic hierarchy. Henry is declared the Siiprcmitin 
Caput oi England's Church ; not voce poptcli, hut by the 
voice of convocation ; the Church is sacrificed, the people 
are sacrificed, and the actors in this vile surrender are 
the true and lawful bishops and clergy of England." It 
is also true that, "all the terrible executions of Henry's 
dreadful reign were perpetrated before the externals of 
the old religion were altered," but it is not true that it 
was before the system of Protestantism was broached, or 
the essentials of the Catholic Church denied. For the 
wretched system was broached, and the Catholic faith in 



14 HENRY VIII. — TO WHOM HE BELONGS. 

its essentials was rejected when the authority of the 
Church and the primacy of the Pope were rejected and 
denied. It is also true that by his will he ordained that 
masses should be celebrated for his soul, for the exter- 
nals of the old religion, the ancient liturgy, the old Cath- 
olic Missals and Pontificals were not yet altered, and the 
masses that were said by an Augustine, a Cuthbert, a 
Wilfrid, an Anselm, a Dunstan, a Bede, and thousands 
of saints of the English Church, were still said in 
Henry's time, and even Cranmer himself, who is ap- 
plauded as a model reformer, ofTered Mass for the re- 
pose of the soul of Francis I., King of France, on the 
19th of June, 1547. "The archbishop of Canterbury, 
Cranmer, with eight other bishops in their richest Pon- 
tifical habits, sung a mass of Requiem." (Collier ii., 
229, as quoted by Dodd.) 

Let me quote the same historian, Dodd, in answer to 
the charge that Henry's evil conduct may be laid at 
the door of the Catholic Church. " To charge the 
scandalous part of Henry's life upon his popish educa- 
tion, is so groundless an aspersion, that it is inconsis- 
tent with every circumstance of the facts. While he 
lived like other princes, in due subjection to the See of 
Rome in all spiritual matters, no one had a better 
character; but as the first step of unfortunate children 
is disobedience to their parents, this seems to have been 
the origin of Henry's disorderly life ; who no sooner 
had broke out of the pale of the Church, but he ranged 
without control through all the paths of vice. Per- 
haps Catholics will not recriminate so closely in their 
rcHections, as to charge the monstrous crimes he was 
gu^iity of upon the reformers* principles, though some of 
his advisers, who put him on the method of RL-foniKit'c n. 



HENRY r/l/.— lV iri/OM HE BELONGS. 15 

were capable of delivering such lessons): yet it has 
always been an observation, both in private life, and in 
the fate of nations, that a defection from the Universal 
Church had \\\o dismal consequences, free thinking as 
to religion, and a boundless liberty as to morals." 
(Part i., Art, vi., p. 323). 



J 5 THE NEW LITURGY 



IV. 

THE NEW LITURGY — BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 

UT is it not strange to hear the objection that 
Henry belonged to the Catholics because masses 
were said for him, when it is known that there was 
in England no other form of public worship, no other 
liturgy, until the second year of Edward VI.? Is it not 
known that the commiission which he appointed in the 
year 1554, '"'pretending to work on the plan of the four 
Rituals hitherto used in England, viz., Sarum, York, 
Bangor and Lincoln, compiled the ' Book of Common 
Prayer ?' " Is it not known that at this time the so-called 
reformers were fearfully mixed up and divided in re- 
gard to the holy Mass ? " One while they were disposed 
to retain the names, sacrifice and mass, and as a neces- 
sary consequence also the word altar^ 

Now, the altar was to be called a table, which was 
removed some distance from the wall, again placed in 
the middle of the chancel, and once more restored to 
its original place, where the high altar stood. *'0n 
which occasion, Dr. Hugh Weston merrily said, 'The 
reformation was like an ape, not knowing which way 
to turn his tail.' " (Foxe, iii, "j^^ This new liturgy en- 
titled ** Book of Common Prayer," and made obli- 
gatory under pains and penalties by act of Parliament 
(2 and 3, Edward VI., c. i), was thus forced on the English 



THE NEW LITURGY. 



17 



Church, though the bishops of Norwich, Hereford, 
Chichester and Westminster, who were on the com- 
mittee for drawing up the bill, protested against it; 
(Collier ii., 364), and four other bishops who had beem 
on the committee, namely, those of London, Durham, 
Carlisle and Worcester, were equally opposed to it, 
(Lords'Journal i., 33 1 , cited by Rev. Mr. Tierney, F.S.A.) 
The act of Parliament providing for " uniformity of 
service and administration of sacraments throughout 
the realm," passed January 15th, 1549, became obli- 
gatory on the Feast of Pentecost of that year. '' Om 
that day," says Rev. Mr. Tierney, " the English service 
was for the first time solemnly performed in the 
Cathedral of St. Pauls'. As to the clergy, although to 
escape pains and penalties, they had been induced to con- 
form to the provisions of the act, they were not disposed 
to abandon the ancient liturgy ; the bishop (Bonner) 
was known, moreover, to be favorable to their views ; and 
accordingly, while the common prayer was recited 
publicly at the high altar. Mass continued to be pri- 
vately celebrated in the different chapels of the 
Cathedral," just the same, we may remark, as it is to- 
day in the different chapels of our own Cathedral. Thus 
we see how, and when, and by whom the Mass was abol- 
ished in England. Soon after came another order to the 
bishops from the king, to burn and destroy all the missals, 
antiphoners, graduals, etc., previously used in the 
churches, and as the bishops were unwilling to enforce, 
and the clergy to obey the royal mandate, abill was passed 
(3 and 4, Edward VI., 10.) by which any person refusing 
to surrender, or any archbishop, bishop, or other ofificer 
neglecting to destroy, such books, should suffer fine or 
imprisonment, as the case might be. This common 



l8 THE NEW LITURGY. 

prayer established in 1549, was revised and altered in 
1552, and again under Elizabeth in 1559, again under 
King James I. in 1604, and afterwards under Charles II. 
in 1662. Thus we have a history of the Anglican form 
of public worship, or Book of Common Prayer, ori- 
ginating with the novelties of the Reformation, forced by 
king and Parliament upon the Church, revised, altered 
and modified to suit and give expression to tjie ever- 
changing faith of a Church that had broken loose from 
the chair of Peter, the Reformers thus instinctively and 
perhaps unconciously affirming the Catholic principle 
that a Church's liturgy or form of prayer is the truest 
expression of a people's faith, which Pope Celestine I. 
thus enunciates, writing (Epis. viii.) to the bishops of 
Gaul : '^Ut legem crede^idi^ lex statuat siipplicandi!' 



NEW ANGLICAN ORDINAL. iq 



v. 

NEW ANGLICAN ORDINAL. 

HAVING changed the ancient liturgy of the 
Church, and destroyed the old missals used in 
the Church of England from time immemorial, and 
thus insensibly robbed the people of their faith by a 
mutilated and deceptive form of public prayer, craftily 
obscuring and implicitly denying the very essence of 
sacrifice, the next step of the wily reformers, headed 
by Cranmer, who, together with a wife had smuggled 
into England from foreign lands many of the errors of 
Luther and Calvin, was to devise an Ordinal or form 
of ordination to accompany the Common Prayer Book, 
which should ignore and obliterate the very idea, char- 
acter and office of the priesthood. During the first 
two years of Edward's reign, no essential change was 
made in the Roman Pontifical. Only the oath of alle- 
giance was changed, and hence all those priests or- 
dained and bishops consecrated during this time, though 
schismatics, and excommunicated and deprived of all 
power of jurisdiction, had valid orders, were validly, 
though illicitly {inimis rite), ordained and consecrated, 
and they could be, and were with proper dispensations in 
the time of Mary allowed again to exercise their orders, 
recognized as bishops and priests. But in 1550 Parlia- 
ment passed an act devising a new method and " uni- 



20 ^E ^V ANGLICAN ORDINAL. 

form fashion and manner of making and consecrating 
bishops, priests, deacons or ministers of the Church," 
and for not concurring in which at least four bishops 
were deprived. This new Ordinal, established by au- 
thorit/ of Edward's Parliament, was again confirmed in 
1552 (5 and 6 Edward VI., c. i.), when the Prayer Book 
was revised. In again examining carefully the history 
of the introduction of the Prayer Book and Ordinal, 
we cannot understand how any one can assert that 
the acts of Parliament innovated nothing, and only 
made the law of the land what was before the ecclesi- 
astical law. The very reverse is transparent. And 
we may be allowed here again to quote the historian 
Dodd, who asserts that this Ordinal of Edward, that by 
which Parker is said to have been consecrated, '' was in 
the ensuing reign (of Mary) examined and declared to 
be insufficient and invalid as to the purposes of conse- 
crating a true ministry," because, among other reasons, 
*' there was no form of words specifying the order that 
was conferred, and particularly, no words or ceremony 
made use of, to express the power of absolving, or 
offering sacrifice." 



CLEMENT'S DISPENSA TION TO HENR Y. 21 



VI. 

cl-ement's dispensation to henry. 

BEFORE finally closing our historic review of this 
period of the Anglican establishment, I must call 
attention to a strange error, or shall we call it, fabrica- 
tion ? 

''The Pontiff did actually give Henry permission 
to have two wives at once." But, continues our 
honest controversialist, who, in this instance at least, 
seems to have descended not to equivocation merely, 
but to bare-faced falsification : '■'■ Bad as Henry was, he 
had more conscience, it would seem, than this compli- 
ant Pope, who, anxious to be on good terms alike with 
Henry and Charles, could only continue to please them 
both by authorizing Henry to practise bigamy." 
There is not a word of truth in it. It is a falsehood, 
manufactured out of whole cloth, and the pretence of 
quoting Lingard makes the fabrication all the more 
glaring. Dr. Lingard (*' History of England," vol. vi., c. 
iii.) acknowledges that the Pope, Clement VII., signed 
a document by which " he granted to Henry a dis- 
pensation to marry, in the place of Catharine, any other 
woman whomsoever, even if she were already promised 
to another, or related to himself in the first degree of 
affinity." We have italicized the words in the place of 
Catharine, showing it was not a permission to have two 



22 CLEMENT'S DISPENSA TIOiV TO HENR V. 

wives at oizce, or an authorization to practise bigamy. 
Dr. Lingard, in a note on this same passage, tells the 
reason why sUch a dispensation was deemed necessary, 
and where the Bull of dispensation could be found. 
Now, as any one may see at a glance, from the words of 
Dr. Lingard, and more clearly still from the document 
sent from England and signed by Clement, A. D. 1527, 
and of his Pontificate the fifth, that the dispensation 
was granted conditionally, to authorize Henry to con- 
tract a valid marriage with Anne Boleyn, if, in the in- 
vestigation then going on before a commission em- 
powered by the Pontiff himself, it were found that the 
marriage of Henry with Catharine was null and in- 
valid. The dispensation was asked, as we read in the 
document itself : '' in eventum declarationis nullitatis 
matrimonii!' and granted: ^^ Si contingat matrimon- 
ium cum praefata Catharina, alias contractum^ nullum 
fuisse, et esse/' Now, how any man can, with these 
documents before him, assert that the Pope granted to 
Henry permission to have two wives at once, or to prac- 
tise bigamy, is more LL?n I can understand, and I tnust 
repeat that it appears to me not an equivocation, but 
a bare-faced ^ falsification, worthy of those, '' who 
reck not what they do or say to damage an adversary." 



TR UTH AND EQU2 VOCA TION. 23 



• VII. 

EQUIVOCATION — AUTHORITY OF SAINTS AND DOCTORS 
OF THE CHURCH. 

WHILST thus retorting in his own words, I must, 
for the sake of truth and in self-vindication, 
notice and repel the injurious charges and insinuations 
contained in the following extracts from the same 
pamphlet, and harped upon in season and out of season 
by the same writer, to throw discredit on Catholic 
theology, and our veracity and regard for the truth. 
" I have no Liguori permitting me by infallible author- 
ity to say anything but plain truth:" "His infallible 
master has commended in a superlative degree the 
teaching of Alphonsus de Liguori, b/i^swhich he is in- 
structed to violate even an ^^//^. r.rHienever 'the good of 
the Church' conflicts with keeping it. It is lawful for 
a Roman Catholic, ' for a good cause, to use equivoca- 
tion, in the modes laid ^wn, and to confirm it with an 
oath' So says the^Paw] authority." We will not 
now advert to the questionable courtesy of the expres- 
sion, Jiis i7ifahiy?le master^ or the misuse of the words, 
Papal an thpMtj^> applied to St. Liguori's treatise on 
moral theology, or the ?:^isapplication of the term in- 
fallible. 1 purpose simply to show that the gentleman 
misconstrues the text of St. Liguori, and gives a mis- 
leading rendering of the very passage which he cites. 
Taking it apart from its context, he gives a false coloring 



24 TRUTH A ND E Q UI VO CA TION. 

to the whole. " I should be sorry to accuse him of 
wilful mistake," but probably not having the works 
of St. Liguori, he has been imposed on " by the 
authors from whom he borrows his statements," and 
who "freely use a license," which neither Jesuit nor 
Liguorian morals, as we know them, would tolerate. 

Then we say it is totally false that '' St. Alphonsus 
de Liguori instructs us to violate even an oath, when- 
ever the ' good of the Church' conflicts with keeping it." 
St. Alphonsus does say — (Lib. 4, Tract. 2, de secundo 
prcBcepto decalogi), and this is obviously the passage 
which our friend pretends to give in an English dress 
— ^^ His positis, certum est et commune apiidonines, quod 
ex just a causa licitum sit uti equivocatione modis expositis, 
et C2im j'uramento firmarer Not, then, whenever the 
good of the Church conflicts with keeping an oath are 
we instructed to violate it, nor does he say that we 
may use equivocation and confirm the same with an 
oath/d??' a good Q.d.M'~>t, but having explained three dif- 
ferent ways in which equivocation, or a play upon 
words, or the use of double meaning expressions, am- 
phibology, may be used, he says simply that it is the 
certain and common opinion of theologians that when 
there is a just cause it is allowable to use equivocation in 
the ways or manner laid down, and before explained, 
and to confirm the same with an oath. Now, we must 
here know what is meant by ex justa causa, which is a 
sine qua 7ion, and what are the modes laid down, or the 
manner in which play on words, or equivocation, is 
allowable. When a word or sentence has two mean- 
ings, and the speaker uses it in one sense, and intends 
his hearers to take it in another, or when an expression 
may be taken in a literal or a spiritual sense, as for in- 



TRUTH A ND E Q UI VO CA TION. 25 

stance, when our Lord said of John the Baptist : '' He is 
Elias," and the Baptist himself said : " I am not Elias." 
Such a play on words, St. Liguori says, is allowable, and 
when there is a just cause the same may be confirmed 
with an oath, and a just cause the saint explains as, 
'* qiiicnmque finis honesties ad servanda bona spiritui, vel 
corpori utilia.'' 

As a recent writer on this subject well says, " The 
right to plead ' not guilty,' acknowledged in our law, St. 
Liguori maintains to be, under certain circumstances, 
a natural right. When a questioner has a right to 
the truth, then the equivocation is forbidden, and where 
the saint would allow of equivocation, his Protestant 
critics would in all probability lie more or less clum- 
sily." To show that this is not a groundless assertion 
I will take the liberty of making an extract from the 
admirable work of Dr. Newman, " Apologia pro vita 
sua," where, whilst afifirming that on this point he 
does not follow the holy and charitable St. Liguori, 
but" rather other saints and doctors of the Catholic 
Church, he shows that many good Protestant au- 
thorities need vindication fully as much as our saint. 
** Now I make this remark, first — great English au- 
thors, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Paley, Johnson, men of 
very distinct- schools of thought, distinctly say, that 
under certain special circumstances it is allowable to 
tell a lie. Taylor says : * To tell a lie for charity, to 
save a man's life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of 
a prince, of a useful and a public person, hath not only 
been done in all times, but commended by great and 
wise and good men. Who would not save his father's 
life at the charge of a harmless lie from persecutors or 
tyrants ?' Again Milton says : ' What man in his senses 



26 TR UTH AND EQ Ul VOCA TION. 

would deny, that there are those whom we have, the 
best grounds for considering that we ought to deceive 
— as boys, madmen, the sick, the intoxicated, enemies, 
men in error, thieves ? I would ask, by which of the 
commandments is a lie forbidden ? You will say, by 
the ninth. If, then, my lie does not injure my neigh- 
bor, certainly it is not forbidden by this command- 
ment.' Paley says : ' There are falsehoods which are 
not lies, that is, which are not criminal.* Johnson : 
'■ The general rule is, that truth should never be vio- 
lated : there must, however, be some exceptions. If, 
for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a 
man has gone?' " The estimable and learned Dr., now 
Cardinal, Newman continues : " You must not suppose 
that a philosopher or moralist uses in his own case the 
license, which his theory itself would allow him. A 
man in his own case is guided by his own conscience ; 
but in drawing out a system of rules, he is obliged to go 
by logic and follow the exact deduction of conclusion 
from conclusion, and be sure that the whole system is 
coherent and one." And as Dr. Newman remarks, and 
as we all know from St. Liguori's life, he who by some 
is so flippantly paraded as authorizing equivocation, 
and even lying, was most scrupulous and of singular 
delicacy of conscience on that very point, so much so, 
that having been unwarily led into defending a case on 
false grounds, whilst in the profession of the law, he 
abandoned his profession and embraced the religious 
life. 

I will then only add what Dr. Newman so well and 
clearly says on this point in the Appendix to the work 
already mentioned : "Almost all authors, Catholic and 
Protestant, admit that zf//^;/ a just cause is present, i\\QVQ 



TR U TH A ND E QUIVO CA TION. 2 7 

is some kind or other of verbal misleading, which is 
not sin," and the equivocation and play on words 
which St. Liguori allows, is precisely such as is not a 
lie, is not sinful, and therefore ex jiista causa, when 
there is a just cause, may be confirmed by an oath. 
This, after all, is only his opinion as a private theolo- 
gian, and the Church, much less the infallible Pope, must 
not be held responsible for his private theological opin- 
ions. Archbishop Kenrick, in his '' Theologia Moralis," 
(Tract, iii., c. xii., § iv.) thus speaks of equivocation, 
or ambiguity of speech : " It is confessed by all Cath- 
olics that in the common intercourse of life, all ambig- 
uity of language should be avoided : but whether such 
ambiguity may ever be allowed, is a subject of dispute. 
Most theologians give an affirmative answer, provided 
a grave cause urges, and from the adjuncts or circum- 
stances the mind of the speaker may be gathered, 
although in reality it is not so gathered." And then 
he instances examples of Holy Writ, as when Abraham 
counselled Sara to call herself his sister, hiding their 
marriage relations, and Isaac would have Rebecca 
called sister, rather than wife. So our Lord said He 
would not go up to the festival day — ^not wishing to go 
up there publicly, with His disciples, and manifest His 
divinity, though intending to go up afterwards in 
secret. (John vii., 8, 10.) He spoke of Lazarus 
sleeping, and said of the girl that she was not dead. 
(John xi., II.) He declared He knew not the day of 
the judgment because it was not to be made known. 
(Mark xiii., 32.) Meaning His body. He spoke of the 
temple, so that the Jews understood Him to speak of 
the temple of Jerusalem. (John ii., 19.) And the 
learned author quotes Jeremy Taylor, affirming : 



28 TRUTH A ND EQUl VO CA TION. 

'' It is lawful, upon a just cause or necessity, to use in 
our answers and intercourse, words of divers significa- 
tion, though it does deceive him that asks." This I 
think is sufficient to show St. Liguori does not even go 
as far on the subject of equivocation as other learned 
and esteemed Anglican authors, and that his language 
is garbled, his meaning distorted, his teaching grossly 
falsified, when he is said to ''teach us to violate even 
an oath whenever th.^ good of the Church conflicts with 
keepingitj' Surely, he " whose teachings have been com- 
mended in a superlative degree," would not contradict 
nor ignore the teachings of Pope Innocent XL, who 
condemned the following proposition: 

''If any one alone, or before others, whether inter- 
rogated, or of his own prompting, either for the sake of 
recreation, or any other end, swears that he did not 
really do what he did do, meaning in his own mind 
something else which he did not do, or some other 
way, from that in which he did it, or any other true 
circumstance, he does not really lie, is not a perjurer." 
No matter, then, what may be the opinion of individ- 
ual theologians and casuists as to the lawfulness of 
misleading by equivocation or ambiguity of language 
in certain circumstances and with just cause, or as to 
cases when untruths are not lies : the teaching of our 
holy Church is that lying is never lawful, that it is not 
allowed to tell the slightest venial lie to save the whole 
world. Not, then, for the good of the Church, nor to 
secure the return to her bosom of the whole Protes- 
tant world, could the Church authorize a wilful lie, much 
less a false oath. A lie is an offence against God, for 
which no finite good, no conceivable good to the whole 
human race, can compensate ; and besides, the catechism 



TRUTH A ND EQUIVO CA TION. 



29 



of the Council of Trent, which is the Church's author- 
ized hand-book of Christian doctrine, declares: ''To 
none, therefore, can it be matter of doubt, that this 
(eighth) commandment condemns lies of every sort, as 
these words of David expressly declare : " Thou wilt de* 
stroy all that speak a lie." And again, " But the evil con^ 
sequences of lying are not confined to individuals ; they 
extend to society at large. By duplicity and lying, good 
faith and truth, which form the closest links of human so- 
ciety, are dissolved ; confusion ensues ; and men seem 
to differ in nothing from demons." I have dwelt on this 
point so fully because again and again these same parties 
have belied ourselves and our Church, charging us with 
holding doctrines which the Church repudiates and 
rejects, and they never tire of throwing in our teeth 
the " license of Jesuit and Liguorian morals." In ad- 
dition to misconstruing, distorting and falsifying the 
teaching of our saints and doctors, they will still insist 
that these authors, because canonized saints and doc- 
tors of the Church; are the very mouth-peices of the 
Church, and speak with Papal, and even infallible, 

authority. 

To set at rest forever this false notion so industri- 
ously circulated, we will again ask a learned friend 
to speak for us. Dr. Newman, in the appendix to his 
*' Apologia pro vita sua," says: ''It is supposed by 
Protestants that, because St. Alfonso's writings have 
had such high commendations bestowed upon them 
by authority, therefore they have been invested with a 
quasi-infallibility. This has arisen in good measure 
from Protestants not knowing the force of theological 
terms. The words to which they refer, are the author- 
itative decision that ' nothing in his works have been 



30 



AUTHORITY OF SAINTS AND 



found worthy of censure, censurd dignum,' but this does 
not lead to the conclusions that have been drawn from 
it. These words occur in a legal document, and can- 
not be interpreted, except in a legal sense. In the 
first place the sentence is negative ; nothing in St. 
Alfono 's writings is positively approved ; and secondly, 
it is not said that there are no faults in what he has 
written, but nothing which comes under ecclesiastical 
censure." Pope Benedict XIV. says : '' The end or 
scope of the judgment pronounced on the works of a 
saint when examined before his canonization, is, that 
it may appear that the doctrine of the servant of God, 
which he has brought out 'in his writings, is free from 
any theological censure. It can never be said that the 
doctrine of a servant of God is approved by the Holy 
See, but at most, it can (only) be said that it is not dis- 
approved {7ion reprobatajn). Hence a writer of Mechlin 
quoted by Dr. Newman, observes : " It is, therefore, 
clear that the approbation of the w^ords of the holy 
bishop teaches not the truth of every proposition, adds 
nothing to them, nor even gives them by consequence 
a degree of intrinsic probability." So much then for 
the approbation of the -writings -of canonized saints. 
Now Avhat about solemnly declared doctors of the Uni- 
versal Church? I borrow my answer from a well- 
informed writer in a late number of the '' London 
Tablet'^ '' The highest appreciation of the doctrine 
of doctors is in a quotation made by Benedict 
XIV. from a decree of Boniface VIII., where we read 
that for one to be raised to such rank, it should be 
verified that, by his doctrine the darkness of errors 
was dispersed, light thrown upon obscurities, doubts 
resolved, the hard knots of Scripture unloosed." Be- 



DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH. 



31 



sides, as the same writer remarks, does not St. Alfonso 
hirjiself often impugn the opinions and controvert the 
teachings of other illustrious and sainted doctors, and 
among others of St. Thomas Aquinas himself, the great 
scholastic doctor and angel of the schools. And may 
not we say in regard to St. Liguori what the monk 
Nicholas is said to have answered, when charged with 
want of reverence to St. Bernard, who is styled the 
most lovable of the doctors of the Church : '' We may 
not indeed doubt of his glory, but we may dispute his 
word." Nay, more, though we are firm believers in 
Papal infallibility, and always have been, even before 
its explicit definition and formal promulgation by the 
Vatican Council, we do not hold that the canonization 
of a servant of God, or his elevation to the rank and 
title of doctor of the Universal Church, by the Holy 
See, invests his writings with infallible, or quasi-infalli- 
ble, or Papal authority, or decides the truth of every 
theological proposition which he maintains, though, as 
Benedict XIV. remarks: ''We should speak of him 
with reverence and attack his opinions only with temper 
and modesty." More still, Catholic faith does not 
make the Pope, nor does he himself claim to be, infal- 
lible, when, as a private doctor or theologian, he dis- 
cusses theological questions or writes on disputed points 
of doctrine or morals. . 



32 PAPAL INFALLIBILITY, 



•VIII. 

■ PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 

I ^HIS brings us to the subject of papal infallibility, 
J- so frequently mentioned and strangely misrepre- 
sented in the pamphlet of an " Old Catholic," review- 
ing our lecture. I must of necessity be brief on 
this point, and must confine myself to a statement of 
the CathoHc doctrine and the grounds on which it is 
based. This will suffice to correct the wrong views 
taken of it, and the, false impressions which unreflect- 
ing readers might take from the pamphlet in question. 
In the last session of the Vatican Council, on the 17th 
day of July, the following definition of Catholic faith 
was promulgated : 

"Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition re- 
ceived from the beginning of the Christian faith, for 
the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the 
Catholic religion, and the salvation of the Christian 
people, the sacred council approving, we teach and de- 
fine, that it is a dogma divinely revealed : that the 
Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra — that is, 



FA PA L IN FA LLIBIL T Y. 



33 



when in the discharge of the office of pastor and 
teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme 
authority he defines a doctrine of faith or morals to be 
held by the Universal Church — is, by the divine as- 
sistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, possessed 
of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer 
willed that His Church should be endowed for de- 
fining doctrine regarding faith or morals ; and that 
therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irre- 
formable of themselves, and not from the consent of 
the Church." 

No novelty in doctrine then is here introduced, no 
new article of faith taught, but faithfully adhering to 
the traditions received frojn the beginning of the Chris- 
tian faith, it is declared to be a dogma divi7iely revealed 
that when the Roman Pontiff, in his supreme official 
capacity of pastor and teacher of all Christians, speak- 
ing ex cathedra, defines a doctrine touching faith or 
morals to be held by all Christians, he cannot err in so 
defining, but through the divine assistance promised to 
Blessed Peter he is endowed with the infallible magis- 
terium or teaching authority, with which our Lord and 
Saviour was pleased to invest His Church. We recog- 
nize no authority on earth, in Pope or council, to make 
a new article of faith, to alter, add to, or take from the 
deposit of faith once committed to the saints ; we be- 
lieve in no new revelation. The question before the 
council was simply, has this doctrine been revealed? is 
it clearly contained in the deposituin fidei ? The bishops 
of the Catholic world assembled in council under the 
presidency of the Sovereign Pontiff claimed no author^ 
ity to make a new dogma, no right to impose a new 
article of faith on the consciences of their people. 



34 PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 

They were indeed judges and qualified witnesses of the 
faith and traditions of the churches '*' over which they 
were placed by the holy Ghost to rule." The revealed 
word of God, the holy Gospels,were reverently enthroned 
in the council chamber, and the Fathers asked them- 
selves, is this doctrine sustained by Scriptural proof ? is 
it taught in the infallible word of God? is it conform- 
able to the revelation of Jesus Christ? what has been 
the faith of Christian Churches ? what traditions have 
been handed down ? It was only after the most con- 
clusive evidence, afforded by an elaborate and critical 
examination of Scriptural authorities, and a patient, 
thorough, searching investigation of the traditions of 
all the Christian Churches, that, it was proclaimed a 
revealed dogma of Christian faith ; that, the above de- 
cree was formulated, with the sacred council approving ; 
that, the explicit formal decision of the question was defi- 
nitively and authoritatively pronounced. Did the 
Council of Nicea, in the year 325, under Pope St„ 
Sylvester, make a new article of faith when it defined 
the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father ? Did 
the Council of Ephesus, in the year 431, under Pope St. 
Celestine change the Christian faith when it defined 
that there was but one person in Christ, and that Mary 
was truly the Mother of God? Does our Supreme 
Court alter the Constitution of the United States, or 
add an amendment to the same, when it interprets of- 
ficially and authoritatively that honored instrument, 
which Americans love to call the great palladium of our 
liberties, and decides grave legal rights and hotly con- 
tested questions to be within the purview of the Consti- 
tution of our fathers, or conformable to its provisions? 
This is all the Fathers of the Vartican Council did, this is 



PA PA L I.VPA LLIB I LI T V, 



35 



all that any Council ever did, or can do. Constituted a 
Supreme Tribunal of /ast resort, it decides not only 
definitively but with infallible authority what is of faith, 
what is conformable to the revealed word of God. This 
is all the Church has ever claimed, but this prerogative 
she has ever claimed and exercised, and it is absolutely 
necessary to her in the fulfilment of her divine com^ 
mission to teach all nations, all truth, down to the end 
of time, absolutely necessary for the preservation of 
oneness of faith, absolutely necessary that we may know 
what is the faith, which we are bound to believe if we 
would be saved. And hence our Blessed Lord,, in estab- 
lishing His Church, and requiring us to receive her 
teaching: " He that will not hear the Church let him 
be to thee as the heathen and publican," (Matt, xviii., 
17), declaring, that " He that believeth not shall be 
condemned," (Mark xvi., 16), must of necessity have 
made her unerring, absolutely infallible in her teaching, 
as he did promising ** Himself to be with her for- 
ever," (Matt, xxviii., 20), 'and to send the Spirit of 
Truth to abide with her forever, to teach her all truth. 
Since the coming of our Saviour there has been no new 
revelation. T\v^ faith once delivered to the saints is un- 
changeable, and hence with St. Paul we say, if any one, 
even an angel of Heaven, preach to you any other 
gospel save that which you have received, let him be 
anathema. (Gal. i., 9.) 

The Church is then simply the witness among men 
of the original revelation. Her oflfice is to declare what 
was contained in that original deposit, and in declaring 
this she is divinely assisted, and thus it is, by the divine 
assistance of the Spirit of Truth, the integrity and purity 
of faith, are divinely and infallibly preserved, and as 



36 PAPAL IN FALLIBILITY. 

may be seen by the decree Itself, and by what may be 
called the preamble to the decree, the whole text of the 
fourth chapter of the first constitution of the Church 
of Christ, she goes back to the teaching of Scripture 
and tradition, councils and doctors of the Church, and 
expressly declares : " The Holy Spirit was not promised 
to the successors of Peter, that by His revelation they 
might make known new doctrine, but that by His as- 
sistance, they might inviolably keep and faithfully ex- 
pound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered 
through the Apostles." Indeed I feel impelled to 
transfer to these pages the full text of that fourth chap- 
ter, " On the infallible magisterium, or teaching author- 
ity of the Roman Pontiff," and although somewhat 
lengthy it will well repay perusal, as it shows the mind 
of the council, the sources whence it drew the doctrine 
defined, and must forever set at rest the charge of 
novelty or innovation. 

*' Moreover, that the supreme power of teaching is 
also included in the Apostolic primacy which the Ro- 
man Pontiff, as the successor of St. Peter, Prince of 
the Apostles, possesses over the whole Church, this 
Holy See has always held, the perpetual practice of the 
Church confirms, and oecumenical councils also have 
declared, especially those in which the East with the 
West met in the union of faith and charity. For the 
fathers of the fourth council of Constantinople, follow- 
ing in the footsteps of their predecessors, gave forth 
this solemn profession : The first condition of salvation 
is to keep the rule of the true faith. And because the 
sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed 
by, who said : Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I 
will build my Church (Matt. xvi. 18), these things 



FA FA L JXFA LLIBIL J 7 ' Y. 



37 



which have been said are approved by events, because 
in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always 
been kept undefiled. and her holy doctrine proclaimed. 
Desiring, therefore not to be in the least degree 
separated from the faith and doctrine of that See, we 
hope that we may deserve to be in the one commun- 
ion which the Apostolic See preaches, in which is the 
entire and true solidity of the Christian religion. 
(Formula of St. Hermisdas, subscribed by the fathers 
of the Eighth General Council [fourth Constantino- 
ple], A. D. 869.) And, with the approval of the second 
council of Lyons, the Greeks professed that the Holy 
Roman Church enjoys supreme. and full primacy and 
pre-eminence over the whole Catholic Church, which it 
truly and humbly acknowledges that it has received with 
the plenitude of power from our Lord Himself in the 
person of the Blessed Peter, Prince or head of the 
Apostles, whose successor the Roman Pontiff is ; and 
as the Apostolic See is bound before all others to de- 
fend the truth of faith, so, also, if any questions regard- 
ing faith shall arise, they must be defined by its judg- 
ment. (Acts of Fourteenth General Council [second 
of Lyons], A. D. 1274.) Finally the Council of Florence 
defined : (Acts of Seventeenth General Council of Flor- 
ence, A. D. 1438) that the Roman Pontiff is the true 
vicar of Christ, and the head of the whole Church, 
and the father and teacher of all Christians, and that 
to him, in Blessed Peter, was delivered by our Lord 
Jesus Christ the full power of feeding, ruling, and gov- 
erning the whole Church. John xxi. 15-17. 

To satisfy this pastoral duty our predecessors ever 
made unwearied efforts that the salutary doctrine of 
Christ might be propagated among all the nations of 



38 PAPAL PVFALLIBILITY. 

the earth, and with equal care watched that it might 
be preserved genuine and pure where it had been 
received. Therefore the bishops of the whole world, 
now singly, now assembled in synod, following the 
long-established custom of churches (Letter of St. 
Cyril of Alexandria to Pope St. Celestine I., A. D. 422, 
volvi., pt. 11. , p. 36, Paris Edit, of 1638), and the form 
of the ancient rule (Rescript of St. Innocent I. to 
Council of Milevis, A. D. 402) sent word to his iVpos- 
tolic See of those dangers especially which sprang up 
in matters of faith, that there the losses of faith might 
be most effectually repaired where the faith cannot fail. 
(Letter of St. Bernard to Pope Innocent II., A. D. 
1130, Epist. 191, vol. iii., p. 433, Paris Edit, of 1742.) 
And the Roman Pontiffs, according to the exigencies 
of time and circumstance, sometimes assembling 
cecumenical councils, or asking for the mind of the 
Church scattered throughout the world, sometimes 
by particular synods, sometimes using other helps 
which Divine Providence supplied, defined as to be 
held those things which with the help of God they 
had recognized as conformable with the sacred Scrip- 
ture and Apostolic tradition. For the Holy Spirit 
was not promised to the successors of Peter that by 
His revelation they might make known new doct- 
rine, but that by His assistance they might inviol- 
ably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or 
deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles. And 
indeed all the venerable fathers have embraced, and 
the holy orthodox doctors have venerated and followed 
their Apostolic doctrine ; knowing most fully that 
this See of holy Peter remains ever free from all 
blemish of error, according to the Divine promise of 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 39 

the Lord our Saviour made to the Prince of His dis- 
ciples : I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,, 
and when thou art converted confirm thy brethern. 
(Luke xxii., 32. See also acts of Sixth General 
Council, A. D. 680.) 

This gift, then, of truth and never-failing faith was 
conferred by heaven upon Peter and his successors in 
this chair, that they might perform their high office 
for the salvation of all ; that the whole flock of Christy 
kept away by them from the poisonous food of error,, 
might be nourished with the pasture of heavenly doc- 
trine; that the occasion of schism being removed, the 
whole Church might be kept one, and, resting on its 
foundation, might stand firm against the gates of hell. 

But since, in this very age, in which the salutary 
efficacy of the Apostolic office is most of all required^ 
not a few are found who take away from its authority, 
we judge it altogether necessary solemnly to assert the 
prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God 
vouchsafed to join with the supreme pastoral office. 

'' Therefore, continues the council adhering to the 
tradition received from the beginning of the Christian 
faith," etc., as above. To demonstrate that this same 
tradition was held in the Church of England before the 
so-called Reformation, I will cite two distinguished arch- 
bishops of Canterbury. St. Thomas, in a letter to the 
bishop of Hereford : " Who doubts that the Church of 
Rome is the head of all the churches, and the fountain 
of Catholic truth ? Who is ignorant that the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven were entrusted to Peter? Does 
not the structure of the whole Church rise from the 
faith and doctrine of Peter?" And the illustrious St. 
Anselm, who died in 1107, writes to a Pope of his day: 



^Q PA PA L INFALLIBLl T V. 

^'Foras much as the Providence of God has chosen 
your HoHness to commit to your custody the (guid- 
ance of the) hfe and faith of Christians, and the gov- 
ernment of the Church, to no other can reference be 
more rightly made, if so be, anything contrary to 
the CathoHc faith arise in the Church, in order that it 
may be corrected by your authority." In further 
proof, if indeed that be needed, that the dogma is no 
novelty, I will take a short extract from a pastoral 
which seventeen of the archbishops and bishops of 
Germany addressed to their clergy and people from 
Fulda after the Vatican Council in 1870: ''Wherefore, 
we hereby declare that the present Vatican Council is 
a legitimate General Council, and moreover that this 
council, as little as any other General Council, has pro- 
pounded or formed a new doctrine at variance with the 
ancient teaching ; but that it has simply developed and 
thrown light upon the old and faithfullypreserved truth, 
contained in the deposit of faith, and in opposition to 
the errors of the day has proposed it expressly to the 
belief of all the faithful; and lastly, that these decrees 
have received a binding power on all the faithful by 
the fact of their final publication by the Supreme 
Head of the Church, in solemn form at the public 
session." Thus, what was always contained in the 
deposit of faith, by the formal explicit definition of 
the council, and solemn promulgation by the Sovereign 
Pontiff, became of binding force on all the faithful ; 
what was before matter of implicit faith became 
thenceforth of explicit faith. What then becomes of 
the objection of '^Keenans Catechwn^' and Bossuet, of 
the waiit of unanimity in the council, etc. 

Before the final ruling of the Supreme Tribunal and 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 



41 



the explicit decision of the question at issue, Catholics 
could take sides, and as the German prelates say : "As 
long as the discussions lasted, the bishops, as their con- 
sciences demanded, and as became their office, expressed 
their views plainly and openly, and with all necessary 
freedom ; and as was only to be expected in an assem- 
bly of nearly 800 Fathers, many differences of opinion 
were manifested." 

That religious questions would arise, and differences 
of opinion, eighteen hundred years after Christ, as well 
as in the first age of the Christian Church, our Lord 
well knew, and he provided for the solution of these 
questions and the settlement of those differences, and 
thereby for the integrity and purity of Christian faith 
by establishing an ever-present, living, speaking author- 
ity in His Church, who would be His own mouthpiece, 
and make His people, the world over, and down through 
the ages, unius labii, and thus save them from the Babel- 
like confusion into which those sects necessarily fall 
who reject the authority of an infallible teacher. 

The Bible is the word of God, but without the living 
voice of an authorized teacher it is wrested to the 
destruction of faith and to the endless divisions of 
Christianity. What anarchy and endless disputes, and 
bitter, bloody feuds, to say nothing of wild revolu- 
tionary schemes, would have ensued before the first 
centennial of our independence, had the wise fathers 
and founders of the Republic left each man to judge 
for himself of the true meaning, scope and intent of the 
constitution, without a tribunal, whose decisions were 
to be final and possessed of a certain legal infallibility. 
And can we believe that our Lord, in giving a consti- 
tution to His Church, which was to spread over the 



^2 PAPAL INFALLIBLITY. 

habitable globe, from ocean to ocean, and from pole 
to pole, and to continue to the consummation of ages, 
would have left us without some such resource, the 
hopeless victims of interminable divisions, doubt, un- 
certainty and error whilst, too, obliging us under pen- 
alty of exclusion from the kingdom, to believe His doc- 
trine, to be His disciples, and to observe all those 
things that he had commanded? But thanks to His in- 
finite love and mercy, He has not thus abandoned us. 
He has established a Church with authority to teach, 
and it is His own mystical body, which cannot exist 
without a head, and which, animated by the divine 
Spirit, becomes the organ of infallible truth and divine 
life to man United with that head must the members 
be. would they share that divine life ; around that head 
were the bishops of the Church of God gathered in 
love and reverence, and bearing witness to the unfailing 
faith of ages ; through the voice of Pius they proclaimed 
that the Sovereign Pontiffs were still the successors of 
blessed Peter, and by the divine assistance promised to 
that privileged Apostle, when defining faith or morals, 
ex cathedra, as doctor of all Christians, are possessed of 
that infallibility with which our Divine Redeemer 
wished his Church to be endowed. 

Such, then, is the true doctrin>.' of Papal infallibility, 
to which at once all bow submission, and cry out with 
the Apostles of our Lord : " Lord, to whom shall we go 
but to thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
(John vi., 69.) How different from the so-called Church 
o{ freedom^ that dares not define its own belief, because 
conscious of no divine authority to teach, for how can 
they teach If they be not sent ? But how unjust and 
ungrounded the charge of crouching servility, made 



PAPAL INFALLIBILTY. ^j 

SO recklessly against Prelates, ready to sacrifice lib- 
erty and life rather than compromise principles, who 
have shown themselves not only men of pure elevated 
characters, but intrepid heroes and martyrs in defence 
of religion, and the rights of conscience. If our own 
testimony on this subject be not taken, whose privilege 
it was to be present in the venerable council, and to 
have had an inside view of all its proceedings — and I 
will during my whole life cherish it as the greatest honor 
of my life, to have been thus brought into friendly, social, 
fraternal relations with many of the most estimable, 
highly cultured, and saintly men — if the plain language 
of the learned and independent German Prelates be 
not enough to vindicate the honor of that council 
against the aspersions of an anonymous writer who, 
ashamed, as well he might be, to make himself known, 
concealed his identity under the title of " Janus/* 
I beg to refer to "Anti-Janus," by Dr., now Car- 
dinal Hergenrother. or to the "True Story of the Vat* 
ican Council," by Cardinal Manning. I have dwelt so 
long on this point, because of the misunderstanding and 
misconception, and either ignorant or wilful misrepre- 
sentation of the doctrine of Papal infallibility, and the 
so-called innovation in doctrine by the Vatican Council. 
This may show also how easily some people can say : "/ 
have shozvn that not even the Roman Church held this 
doctrine of infallibility four years ago ;" and': ''I have 
shozvji th.3.t Pius IX., on the i8th of July, 1870, taught 
a new doctrine," when they hsiVQ shown no such thing, 
nor can they shov\^ anything more than that four years 
ago, from the time the person wrote, that is, on the i8th 
of July, 1870, there was not an explicit positive de- 
cision, or an official ruling of the Supreme Tribunal o£ 



44 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 



God's Church, that the doctrine of Papal infaUibiUty 
was actually contained in the deposit faith, revealed by 
Christ, and committed to the keeping of the Church. 

In civil affairs doubts arise as to the legality of cer- 
tain acts, or to the constitutionality of certain legisla- 
tive enactments, and men take sides and are free to 
hold different opinions, because as yet the case has 
not teen authoritatively and definitively decided, 
but when the case has been submitted to the Supreme 
Court, and the decision has been handed down, there 
is no longer question. That decision is appealed to as a 
final settlement of the question, though no one in his 
senses would say that the fundam^ental laws of the 
country have been changed, or a new article added to 
the constitution by such a decision. Now, there is 
just one more point in this connection to which I wish 
to call attention. I asserted in my lecture that in the 
ancient Church, communion with the See of Rome was 
a conclusive proof and crucial test, not only of legitim- 
acy of succession, but also of orthodoxy of faith, to which 
our *' Old Catholic" reviewer replies; ''This I frankly 
allow : nay, this I delight to show» zvhile the bishops of 
Ro?ne were ortJiodox, they were pillars of orthodoxy." 
But, he continues : " When a Bishop of Rome became 
a heretic, it was no advantage to any one to be in 
communion with him." He then goes on to state 
that we are bound to exclaim in pious horror that 
such a thing is impossible, viz., that a Pope could be a 
heretic, and then attempts to prove by a quotation 
from " Bossuet, the greatest of all modern bishops," 
that such is the fact. Needless to say that the words 
of Bossuet prove nothing of the sort, and although we 
believe that no Bishop of Rome ever became a 



PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. . 45 

heretic, we are not bound to believe that such a thing 
cannot be. We are bound to believe that no Bishop of 
Rome ever taught, or could teach, ex cathedra, in his 
official capacity of teacher of the Universal Church any- 
thing heretical, false, or immoral. Here is a distinction 
which some people do not see, or care to make, and no 
wonder that infallibility in this sense, personal infalli- 
bility, or that Catholics were bound to believe the 
Pope in himself to be infallible, was declared to be a 
Protestant invention. It is then a baseless fabrication, 
an " Old Catholic," invention, that we have made a 
God of the Pope, or believe him to be impeccable, and 
hence how vain and hopeless the task of combating 
Papal infallibility by charges of corruption, vice and 
wickedness made against certain Popes. 

The terms of the Vatican definition are too plain to 
be misconstrued in this way, and precisely to obviate 
this difficulty, to anticipate this objection, and pre- 
clude the possibility of this wrong interpretation, the 
title of the fourth chapter, which originally read : '' On 
the Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiff," was changed 
to that of, '' The infallible teaching authority of the 
Sovereign Pontiff." And is it not a very significant 
fact — a fact which may be said even to constitute a 
prima facie evidence in favor of the doctrine of the 
Pope's infallibility — that, although in every age from 
the beginning of Christianity, disputes and controver- 
sies concerning points of belief, doctrinal questions 
most grave, complicated and vital to the unity and 
integrity of the faith of Christ were referred to the 
Holy See from every quarter of the Christian world, 
were answered and decided by the Sovereign Pontiffs, 
not a single one of the long, unbroken line of Supreme 



46 PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 

Pastors, from Peter down to Leo XIIL, now gloriously- 
feigning, can be convicted of teaching ex cathedra — in 
his official capacity — erroneous doctrine or erring in 
his Pontifical decision of what was to be held as of 
faith by the Universal Church. When again we reflect 
that in the mass of official acts of Popes, Pontifical 
constitutions, bulls, decrees and encyclicals accumul- 
ating during nineteen centuries, ransacked, sifted, 
keenly scrutinized, carefully and searchingly examined 
in the discussion of a question now happily closed, 
nothing positive could be discovered in conflict with 
the infallible prerogative of the chair of Peter, is not 
the conviction forced upon us that the " finger of God 
is here," that this astounding fact can be reasonably 
and satisfactorily accounted for only by the special 
assistance of the Holy Ghost, promised to His Church 
by Christ our Lord. With all this before us, what 
difficulty can we find in believing and professing that 
the same divine help, the same supernatural guidance, 
the same assistance of the Holy Spirit will ever be 
vouchsafed to the visible Head of the Church in the 
discharge of the sacred and sublime duties of his 
Apostolical office of vicar of Christ and teacher of the 
Universal Church, especially in view of the promises 
made to Peter by our Lord, and of the absolute need 
that the truth of faith should be thus divinely guarded 
through the divinely appointed Supreme Pastor and 
shepherd of the whole flock of Christ: "Feed my 
lambs, feed my sheep." (John xxi., i6, 17.) 



POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORIUS. 47 



IX. 

POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORIUS. 

NOW, we said above, that since the days of Peter, 
for whom our Lord prayed that his faith might 
not fail : *' I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail 
not," (Luke xxii., 32) nearly nineteen hundred years 
ago, nothing has been discovered in the official acts 
of his successors in the See of Rome in conflict with 
the decree of the Vatican Council concerning the in- 
fallible teaching authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. 
In fact, of only two in that long line of Pontiffs has 
the orthodoxy been questioned, and even these two, 
Liberius, whose Pontificate extended from the year 352 
to 366, and Honorius, who reigned from 625 to 638, rigid 
historical research has fully vindicated from the charge 
of teaching error. As these charges are again repeated 
in the pamphlet before me, and with so much confi- 
dence, I must beg my readers' pardon for detaining them 
by a brief refutation. A cursory review of these points 
of Church history may not prove uninteresting or un- 
instructive. Liberius was the immediate successor of 
Julius, who asserted the jurisdiction of his See over 
the whole Church, East and West, and severely rebuked 
the Eastern heretical bishops for daring to take decisive 
action in the case of Athanasius without his authority, 
and the immediate predecessor of Damasus, of whom 



48 POPES LIBEKIUS AND HON OKI US 

St. Jerome says: ''Following no leader but Christ, I 
am associated in communion with thy Holiness, that 
is, with the chair of Peter; upon this rock I know that, 
the Church has been built." Honorius was appealed 
to in the question of jurisdiction and precedence be- 
tween the sees of Canterbury and York, and although 
some people will say that England was never subject 
to Rome, or acknowledged the supremacy of the 
Roman Pontiff, this same Honorius gave the pallium 
to Honorius and Paulinus, archbishops of Canterbury 
and York, granting them the faculty, that whichever 
of them should survive might ordain the suc- 
cessor of the deceased. But now to the charges: 
"Liberius turned Arian," " Athanasius is condemned 
by the Bishop of Rome for adhering to orthodoxy," 
''The holy and orthodox bishop of Poictiers says: 
'Anathema to thee, Liberius, to thee, and to those who 
are with thee. I repeat — anathema ! Again, a third 
time, anathema to thee, thou prevaricator, Liberius.' " 
Now, it is certain Liberius never became an Arian, and 
never condemned St. Athanasius. The most that is 
said of him by his enemies is, that w^orn out by the 
sufferings of exile into which he had been sent by the 
Arian emperor, Constantius, on account of his uncon- 
querable firmness in sustaining the orthodox Catholic 
faith, he at length weakened and signed one of the 
specious and deceptive professions of faith, cunningly 
devised by the wily Arian tricksters, and thus pur- 
chased his release from banishment and return to 
Rome. It is doubtful that St. Hilarius ever wrote 
the words here ascribed to him ; many regard them, and 
with good reason, as an interpolation ; again, though 
there were three different formulas or professions of faith 



POPES LIBERIUS AND HONOR J US. 49 

framed In three different Arian conferences or gather- 
ings at Sirmium, one of which Liberius is said to have 
subscribed, yet no one can determine which of them ; 
and lastly, if he did sign the most objectionable of 
them, it militates not in the least against the doctrine 
of Papal infallibility, in as much as when under com- 
pulsion and in exile, in a moment of weakness he sub- 
scribed a profession of faith which, though capable of 
an orthodox interpretation, might be construed as 
favoring Arianism and condemning St. Athanasius, the 
great champion of orthodoxy, he was not teaching the 
Church, was not, ex cathedra, deciding what should be 
held by the Universal Church. But with the great 
mass of authorities, we do not believe that he ever 
subscribed any such doubtful formula, and it cannot 
be proved that he ever did. We do not believe that 
St. Hilarius ever pronounced the anathemas above 
mentioned, and even if he did, it is no ways conclusive 
against the orthodoxy of Liberius, for we can easily 
suppose him deceived by the lies of the Arians seek- 
ing to support their errors by the authority of the 
Bishop of Rome, or giving vent to overwrought feel- 
ings of indignation and holy zeal at what he conceived 
to be siding with the enemies of the faith. 

In concluding this question of Liberius, I can not do 
better than quote from a great and learned historian, 
who after noting the different authorities making these 
charges against the Pontiff, and among them the frag- 
ments of Hilarius, says,: " But considering the silence 
of Socrates, Theodoret, Cassiodorus and Sulpicius 
Severus, there is a strong suspicion that this passage 
was interpolated by the Arians, whose restless spirit 
stopped at nol:hing that might further their cause. 



50 " POPES LIBERIUS AND HONOR I US. 

The passage has, moreover, no connection in the con- 
text either with what precedes or follows. This we find 
in a note on page 542, Alzog's "Church History," vol. 
i. (Pabisch and Byrne), and in the text the same author 
says: "Constantius yielding to the prayers of the 
most estimable ladies of Rome, granted permission 
to Pope Liberius to return to his See; but it is 
thought that the menacing conduct of the Roman 
people, who openly protested against the imperial 
decree authorizing a rival bishop, and cried out in the 
circus, that as there was but one God and one Christ, 
there should be but one bishop, contributed more 
than anything else to extort from the emperor this 
act of clemency." What becomes now of the ana- 
thema to Liberius? How unlikely that he ever 
turjied Arian, or condemned St. Athanasius ! But how 
evident, and demonstrably certain, that he never in 
any official document, or by 2Siy ex cathedra pronounce- 
ment, taught error, or promulgated anything unor- 
thodox, which would be necessary to constitute a valid 
objection to the doctrine of Papal infallibility. What 
additional strength does all this acquire when we find 
St. Jerome, who was not wont to fawn on or flatter 
either bishops or Popes, in the very next Pontificate, 
when he certainly could not have been ignorant of any- 
thing that occurred under the previous Pope, declaring 
communion with the See of Rome the test of ortho- 
doxy : "Whoever is not in communion with the 
Church of Rome is outside the Church, and therefore 
was one of the twelve set over all the others as the re- 
cognized Head, that all occasion of schism might be 
removed ;" and Pope Hormisdas, some time afterwards, 
in the beginning of the 6th century, declared : "The 



POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORIUS. 



51 



faith of the Apostolic See has always been inviolate ; 
it has preserved the Christian religion in its integrity 
and purity." Enough, then, about Liberius, whom we 
think we have fully vindicated from the charges brought 
against him. Can we do as much for Honorius? 



52 HON OKI us VINDICATED, 



X. 

HOXORIUS VINDICATED. 

WE think we can, at least as far as the charge of offi- 
cially teaching heresy goes, for all we pretend or 
care to do, is to show that the prerogative of Papal in- 
fallibility as defined in the Vatican Council has been 
in no wise impaired or obscured by the ex cathedra 
teaching of these two much maligned Pontiffs. Here, 
then, are the charges against him quoted from Bos- 
suet's " Defence of the Declaration of the Gallican 
Clergy :" *' Honorius being duly interrogated concern- 
ing the faith by three Patriarchs, gave most wicked 
answers. Pie was condemned by the Sixth General 
Council under anathema. Previous to this anathema, 
he was sustained by the Roman Pontiffs, his successors ; 
but since the supreme judgment of the council, the Pon- 
tiffs have condemned him under the same anathema." 
We are then asked by our " Old Catholic" friend, '' where 
infallibility was in those days, when one Bishop of 
Rome taught heresy from his throne, and of his suc- 
cessors some upheld him and others anathematized 
him as a heretic?" But as Bossuet, "the greatest of 
all modern bishops, who have lived and died in com- 
munion with the Pope, and who had no mind to be a 
mere worshipper of Popes," is cited against us, it is 
only fair to that illustrious bishop to tell our readers 



HONORIUS VnVDICATED. 53 

that in the opinion of such men as de Maistre, the 
''Defence of the GalHcan Declaration" should not be 
taken as the expression of the true and permanent 
sentiments of Bossuet ; that it was a work wrung from 
one who, though a bishop, and, if you please, the 
" greatest of modern bishops," for we wish not to dim 
his glory or extenuate his fame, was forced to act the 
courtier to the royal despot who not only claimed to be 
the incarnation of all political or state power, " Vetat 
c est moi^' but would have all ecclesiastical and spiritual 
authority subject to his beck. It was a posthumous 
work, which he never wished to publish, for although 
he lived twenty-two years after the famous declaration 
of 1682, he never would publish its " Defence," and it 
is an insult to the memory of the immortal prelate to 
have published it under a title of which he seemed to 
be ashamed. The work itself, undertaken in obedience 
to a royal master, he altered and revised, and changed 
so often and so much that his historian declares that 
" no one can doubt, that it was his design to change his 
whole work, as he had actually changed the first three 
chapters." The work which we have under the title 
of the '' Defence of the Declaration of the Gallican 
Clergy," does not then express Bossuet's real mind, and 
is deprived of all authority, as his purpose was to 
change it entirely, and his manuscripts show that he had 
nearly completed his design when death overtook him. 
With Count de Maistre we may say of Bossuet, that : 
" In the same man there seemed to be two different 
characters, the Roman Catholic bishop and the French 
courtier: the bishop, who speaking the language of 
the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles and the 
Fathers belonged from the very bottom of his soul 



54 HONORIUS VINDICATED. 

to the Roman Church ; the courtier, who to please his 
master, extends one hand to the centuriators of 
Magdeburg, and the other to Voltaire, the better to 
falsify history, to the prejudice of the Popes and the 
profit of kings." 

But how grandly and how eloquently does this 
" greatest of modern bishops, who is no worshipper 
of the Popes," when writing in his true character of a 
Catholic bishop, untrammelled by court influences or 
royal favors, speak of the See of Peter, the preroga- 
tives of the Roman Church, and the authority con- 
ferred on, and the obedience due to the successors of 
him to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven were 
entrusted. We cannot forbear a short extract from 
the *' Discourse on Universal History," revealing the 
lofty genius and true Catholic mind of the illustrious 
bishop of Meaux : *' What consolation for the children 
of God, what conviction of truth ! when they see that 
from Innocent XI., who now (1681) fills so worthily the 
first See of the Church, we go back without break even 
to Peter, established by Jesus Christ Prince of the 
Apostles : and there taking up the Pontiff s who served 
under the law, we go back even to Aaron and to 
Moses ; and thence to the Patriarchs and the origin of 
the world. What a succession, what a tradition, what 
a marvellous connecting chain. If our mind, naturally 
uncertain, and by its incertitude become the sport 
of its own reasoning, has need, in questions where sal- 
vation is at stake, to be steadied and determined by 
some certain authority, what greater authority can 
there be than that of the Catholic Church, which com- 
bines in itself all the authority of past ages, all the 
ancient traditions of the human race up to its origin. 



HONORIUS VINDICA TED. 



s-s-. 



Thus the society which Jesus Christ in fine, after ages 
of expectancy, founded on the rock, and over which 
Peter and his successors should preside by Hisorders^ 
is justified by its own continuity, and bears in its 
eternal duration the impress of the hand of God. It 
is this succession, which no heresy, no sect, no other 
society but the Church of God can claim. The founders, 
of new sects among Christians, and the sects established 
by them, will be found to have been detached frorr^ 
this great body, from this ancient Church which Jesus 
Christ founded, and in which Peter and his successors 
held the first place." To this let us add what this 
*^ greatest of modern bishops, and no worshipper of 
Popes" says in the first part of his " Discourse on the 
Unity of the Church :" " What is intended to sustain 
an everlasting Church, can itself have no end. Peter 
will live in his successors ; Peter will always speak in his 
chair; this the Fathers assert; this sixhundred and thirty 
bishops in the council of Chalcedon confirmed. * " * 
This is the Roman Church, which, taught by St. Peter 
and his successors, knows no heresy. * * ^ Thus the 
Roman Church is always a virgin Church, the Roman 
faith is always the faith of the Church; what has been 
believed, is believed still ; the same voice is heard 
everywhere ; and Peter remains in his successors, the 
corner-stone of the faithful. Jesus Christ Himself has 
said it, and heaven and earth shall pass away sooner 
than His word. But let us see the consequences of 
that word. Jesus Christ pursues His design and after 
having said to Peter, the eternal preacher of the faith :. 
' Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my 
Church,' He adds: 'I will give to thee the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven.' Thou, who hast the preroga- 



56 HO NO RI us VINDICATED. 

tive of preaching the faith, thou shalt have also the 
keys, which designate the authority of government ; 
' whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in 
heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall 
be loosed in heaven.' All are subjected to these 
keys ; all, my brethren, kings and people, pastors 
and flocks; we publish it with joy, for we love 
unity, and glory in our obedience. Peter was com- 
manded first ' to love more than all the other Apostles,' 
and then' to feed' and govern all, ' both the lambs and 
the sheep,' the little ones and their mothers, and the 
shepherds themselves ; shepherds towards the people, 
but sheep in regard to Peter." 

Thus does Bossuet, following the Patriarchs, the 
Prophets, and Apostles, proclaim aloud the infallible 
promises of God to his Church and her head. In justice 
to the great Bossuet, we deemed it a duty to say this 
much. We now return to Honorius, whose case, in our 
opinion, is correctly stated by Archbishop F. P. Kenrick 
in the brief notice of the Sovereign Pontiffs appended to 
the fourth volume of his " Dogmatic Theology," in these 
few words : " That he was imposed on by Sergius 
of Constantinople and inopportunely commanded 
silence in relation to one or two wills in Christ, most 
authors admit ; but that he was guilty of heresy is de- 
void of every semblance of truth." But the gist of 
the charges against him, and his vindication may be 
at once discovered from words already quoted from 
the concluding words of cap. xxvii., Lib. vii., *' De- 
fensioDeclarationis cleri Gallicani." 

'' Honorius being duly interrogated concerning the 
faith by three Patriarchs, gave most wicked answers." 
In the first place, we would ask, why was the Bishop of 



I 

HONORIUS VINDICATED. 57 

Rome interrogated by these three Eastern Patriarchs? 
Is not this very fact an additional and undeniable evi- 
dence that in the East as in the West, by Patriarchs, as 
well as by bishops, and even by heretics the primacy of 
the Roman See and the supreme jurisdiction of the 
Roman Pontiff were acknowledged ? The three Patri- 
archs referred to are, Sergius of Constantinople 
and Cyrus of Alexandria, both tainted with the 
Monothelite heresy, and Sophronius, of Jerusalem, 
an able and learned champion of the Catholic faith. 
To these Honorius is said to have given wicked 
anszvers, and all the charges of heresy alleged against 
him are to be found in his letters to them, and 
particularly in his letters to Sergius. Is not this of 
itself sufficient to show that the case of Honorius offers 
no difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Papal infalli- 
bility, as we have already explained it, and as it has 
been defined in the famous Vatican decree of 1870^ 
Where does he teach, or pretend to teach the Universal 
Church ? where does he define or pretend to define what 
must be held by the whole Church as of Catholic 
faith? Suppose that in these letters some expressions 
are found not entirely consistent with orthodox Catho- 
lic faith, and grant that he was deceived and fell into 
the trap sprung upon him by the wily Sergius and 
wrote to suppress all discussion about one or two wills 
in Christ, can any one reasonably say that he taught 
heresy from his throne ? or made a dogmatic, ex cathedra 
definition in regard to faith or morals? But more 
than that. With the letters of Honorius before us, and 
after a careful study of the subject as presented by the 
clear, keen, argumentative mind of Bossuet himself, 
Honorius cannot, in our opinion, be convicted of 



58 HONOKIUS VINDICATED 

heresy, he wrote nothing but what is capable of a Catho 
he meaning. He repeatedly proclaimed Christ to be 
perfect God and perfect man, thus condemning the 
errors of Nestoriusand Eutyches, showing that though 
he expressed himself inaccurately, he thoitgJit correctly 
on the two operations in Christ. 

No wonder, then, that John IV., his second successor, 
declared, as we read in Alzog's "Church History," *' that 
Honorius mistook the question at issue to be, whether 
or not there were two confiictijig Jiuinan wills in 
Christ, the one of the spirit, and the other of the flesh, 
which, if such were the case, would necessarily imply 
the opposition of the human to the Divine will — an 
error of which Honorius wished to disabuse Sergius." 
In speaking of one will and one tJieandrie operation, he 
meant nothing more than the moral unity of the 
Divine and human wills. " Not having seized the real 
drift of the controversy, it was but natural that he 
should express himself obscurely, and with a lack of 
precision in his reply to the craftily worded letter of 
Sergius." (Alzog's" Church History," vol. i, p. 635.) 
From the same source we learn that not only did his 
successors sustain him, but the Abbot Maximus, the 
most acute theologian of his age, and foremost cham- 
pion of the Catholic cause against the Monothelites, 
especially after the death of Sophronius, asserts em- 
phatically in two different places that Honorius was 
an opponent of the Monothelite^. The heretics, however, 
used the hasty and ill-considered letter of Honorius 
in support of their error, and his secretary, the Abbot 
John, in vindication of his first (cursory) letter asserted 
openly that it had been falsified (falsely interpreted) 
by the Greeks. Whereupon the Abbot Maximus 



HONORIUS VINDICATED. 



59 



exclaims: ''Who, then, is a more reliable interpreter 
of that letter — the enlightened abbot, who is still 
alive, who wrote it in the name of Honorius, or they 
of Constantinople, who say what they please?" So 
much, then, in vindication of the orthodoxy of Hono- 
rius, but what now about his condemnation by the 
Sixth General Council? ''He was condemned by the 
Sixth General Council under anathema. Previous to 
this anathema, he was sustained by the Roman Pon- 
tiffs, his successors, but since the supreme judgment of 
the council^ the Pontiffs have condemned him under 
the same anathema." (" Defense," etc.) This sixth 
oecumenical council, called also the First Trttllan 
Synod, was opened at Constantinople Nov. 7, 680, 
and presided over by three legates of Pope i\gatho. 
The Pope's dogmatical epistle was read as the basis of 
the council's deliberations, which defined the contro- 
verted point of faith regarding the two wills in Christ 
corresponding to the two natures so clearly and suc- 
cinctly, that the assembled fathers cried out with one 
voice: "Peter hath spoken by the mouth of Agatho." 
In the fourth session of the council another letter of 
the same Pope, who was recognized as the very mouth- 
piece of blessed Peter, was read and received without 
opposition, in which he thrice solemnly declares : 
" Through the grace of the omnipotent God, this Apos- 
tolical Rom.an Church will be proved to have never erred 
from the path of Apostolical tradition, nor has it suc- 
cumbed to heretical novelties, but as froni the begin- 
ning of the Christian faith it received from its founders, 
the Princes of the Apostles, so it remains untainted 
even to the end, according to the divine promise of 
our Lord and Saviour, spoken to the Prince of the dis- 
ciples in the holy. Gospel." (Luke xxii., 32.) 



5o HONORIUS VINDICATED. 

This much premised, we answer the objections in the 
words of Dr., now Cardinal, Hergenrother: '' A Pope is 
not infallible in proceedings such as those of Hono- 
rius, who contributed unintentionally to the increase 
of heresy by not issuing decisions against it. His letters 
contain no decision, neither do they contain any false 
doctrine. No decision of his ever was, or ever could be 
condemned as false, otherwise the sixth council would 
have contradicted itself, for it recognized that the Holy 
See had in all time the privilege of teaching only the 
truth. He was condemned for having rendered him- 
self morally responsible for the spread of heresy, by 
having neglected to publish decisions against it, and 
in this sense alone was his condemnation confirmed by 
Leo n." (" Catholic Church and Christian State." Her- 
genrother, vol. i., p. 83.) In this sense, then, and in this 
sense only, did the council condemn Honorius, and suc- 
ceeding Pontiffs re-echo the condemnation, that by his 
negligence he allowed \.\\^ unspotted faith to be defiled. 
Not as a heretic, then, but as one who had actually by 
his culpable indecision become an abettor of heresy and 
heretics, and he was justly blamed and severely taken 
to task for doing precisely what so many wished Pius 
IX. to do, viz., to put off and leave undecided a grave 
doctrinal question that was agitating and disturbing 
the Christian Church and severely testing its unity and 
peace. Pope Leo H., who succeeded Agatho before 
the close of the council, confirmed its decrees and its 
condemnation of Honorius, because the heretics, dis- 
torting the meaning of his words, made use of his name 
and his authority to propagate their errors, and as he 
wrote to the Spanish bishops, " because he did not at 
once extinguish the flame of heretical error, but by his 



HONOR! us VINDICATED. 5^ 

negligence contributed fiie I to the fire.'' We have dwelt, 
perhaps unnecessarily long in vindication of these two 
much abused Popes, but we thought it well to clear 
up a matter^ out of which the enemies of the Papacy 
make so much capital, and it is not always easy for 
everybody to have access to the historical documents 
or the authorities on which the solution of these ques- 
tions rests. 



62 ST. GREGORY THE GREAT 



XL 

ST. GREGORY THE GREAT CLAIMING AND EXERCISING 
PAPAL SUPREMACY. 

IN the pamphlet before us we are told that: ''by- 
usurpation Boniface III. began, and Nicholas I. 
completed a Papacy ;" and that : '' St. Gregory was the 
last Bishop of Rome who obeyed the canons of the 
Church in this respect," that is, as far as we can gather 
the meaning of the words from the context, the last 
who held that all bishops were "the equals of their 
brother in the See of Rome," and denied " any suprem- 
acy of one over the others, such as is claimed by the 
Popes." Now we propose to show, from his own words 
and ofificial acts, that St. Gregory claimed this Suprem- 
acy of spiritual jurisdiction over his brethren in the 
episcopate throughout the whole Church, just as fully, 
and as uncompromisingly as Boniface III., or Nicholas 
I., or as Pius IX., or Leo XIII. Of course we can show 
that in every age, from the Apostles down to Gregory^ 
the same supreme authority was recognized in and by 
the successors of St. Peter in the See of Rome, yet we 
are pleased to have here a starting point and a de- 
liberate acknowledgment that St. Gregory was a bishop 
who obeyed the canons, and is a reliable witness 
of the "doctrine of Catholic antiquity." I will 
not now stop to discuss a ^'primacy, or presidency 



EXERCISING PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



63 



consistent with the co-equality of all bishops which the 
Church itself has instituted or regulated by canons, but 
forbidding any supremacy of one over the other," as 
" St. Gregory, who obeyed the canons of the Church, 
in this respect," recognizing a primacy regulated in- 
deed by canons, but instituted by Christ, and resting, 
as all the laws of the Church, rest, on the divine law, 
claims, and as we shall presently see, exercises a suprem- 
acy of spiritual jurisdiction or authority over bishops, 
archbishops and Patriarchs, but as St. Gregory is a re- 
cognized, legitimate, and orthodox Bishop of Rome, 
* who obeys the canons of the Church," we cannot be 
much deceived in holding to the primacy of the See 
of Peter, and Papal supremacy, as he understood it. 
Neither will I stop to point out the childlike naivete 
of the following passage : " Christ gave a primacy among 
the Apostles to St. Peter ; but he limited it by rebuking 
the inquiry, ' who should be the greatest,' and by com- 
manding them to call no man master, they being all 
brethren, with one Father in Heaven St. Peter him- 
self was rebuked as a ' Satan' the moment he departed 
from the words of Jesus." 

It were surely labor lost to argue with a man who 
can assert that our Lord's instructions to His disciples 
regarding personal humility and warnings against per- 
sonal ambition, His intimation that our Father in 
Heaven is incomparably more to be regarded than 
any father upon earth, and that no master is to be 
followed, who would lead us away from Christ ; His 
paternal chiding of P'eter, callinghim " Satan" on account 
of his indiscreet Zealand his ardent but unenlightened 
and too human love for his Divine Master, were in- 
tended to limit, or rather destroy — in the opinion of 



64 ST. GREGORY THE GREAT 

those who deny any primacy, or at least any of divine 
institution — a primacy which our Blessed Saviour 
deemed necessary for the government of His Church, 
and which, though previously promised in strong and 
solemn words (Matt, xvi., i8, 19), was actually con- 
ferred only after Peter had fully atoned for his shame- 
ful three denials, by his triple profession of greater 
love on the shore of the sea of Ti'berias. (John xxi., 
15, et seq.) But now, to return to St. Gregory, who is 
introduced to us as the model Christian Bishop of 
Rome, in contradistinction to the " despotic Pon-tiff of 
the modern Roman Church, " in these terms: "And 
here is the place to quote St. Gregory, the last Bishop 
of Rome who obeyed the canons of the Church in this 
respect. When a bishop flattered him with'the pompous 
title of universal jurisdiction, Gregory rebuked the 
brother kindly but sharply, in the following weighty 
words : (Epis. v. , 20. et seq.) " None of my predecessors 
would use tliis inipioiLs e£/^r^ (Universal Bishop), because 
in reality if a Patriarch be called imiversal, this takes 
from all others the title of Patriarch. Far, very far 
from every Christian soul be the wish to usurp any- 
thing that might diminish, hoivever little, the honor of 
his brethren. - -^ ^ Give not to any one the title of 
universal, lest you deprive yourself of your own due, 
by offering what you do not owe to him." 

Surely our Old Catholic" brother never read these 
letters of St. Gregory, from which he pretends to 
quote, and to which he gives references. He surely 
would not knowingly and deliberately impose on the 
public. If he ever read these letters he would know 
that these words of Gregory are not addressed to a 
brother " bishop, who flattered him with a pompous 



EXERCISING PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



65 



title of universal jurisdiction." He would know that 
this very fact in the history of St. Gregory's pontificate 
affords the strongest possible proof that he claimed 
universal jurisdiction, and this sharp rebuke is admin- 
istered in the exercise of his unquestioned right to re- 
prove, correct and condemn not simple bishops only, 
but Patriarchs as well, and even the Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople. Now what is the fact in the case ? The 
Patriarch John of Constantinople, called the Faster, 
sending to Rome an account of the sentence passed 
against a priest accused of heresy, styles himself re- 
peatedly, oecumenical or universal Patriarch, and Pope 
St. Gregory, in his undoubted right as head of the 
Universal Church and guardian of the rights of other 
bishops and other patriarchs, reproves this as an ar- 
rogant, ambitious usurpation of a pomxpous title, 
and observing the order of fraternal connection, twice 
admonished him privately by his nuncio in Constanti- 
nople, and when this failed to bring him to a sense of 
his fault, he wrote in sharp but fatherly reproof to him- 
self, to the Emperor Mauritius, to the Empress Con- 
stantina Augusta, and to other eastern bishops, and in 
particular a joint letter to St. Eulogius, Patriarch of 
Alexandria, and St. Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch. 
It is from this letter to those patriarchs, the xliii., not 
the XX., that the language above quoted is taken, 
though words to the same effect and in the same sense 
are found in all of them. 

To make the matter clearer, I will give a short extract 
from some of these noble productions, worthy the pen 
of Gregory the Great ; and first from Epist. xx, L. 5, 
written to the Emperor Mauritius, and given as author- 
ity for the utterly false assertion that the great Pope 



156 ST. GREGORY THE GREAT 

was only rejecting a pompous title offered to him by 
a flattering friend : " It is evident," writes the Pope to 
the emperor, " to all acquainted with the Gospel, that 
by our Lord's words, the care of the whole Church was' 
committed to St. Peter, Apostle, and Prince of all the 
Apostles. For to him is said: Peter, lovest thou me? 
Feediiiy sJieep. (John xxi., 17.) To him is said : Behold 
Satan hath sought to sift you as wheat and I have prayed 
for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not, and thou at length 
converted, confirm thy brethren. (Luke xxii., 31.) To 
him is said : Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will 
build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it. A 7id I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven, and zvhatsoever thou shalt bind on earth it 
shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt 
loose upon eartJi it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matt, 
xxi., 19.) Behold he receives the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven, the power of binding and loosing is given to 
him, the care and the princedom of the whole Church 
are committed to him." Verily St. Gregory does not 
agree with our friend about the limitation of the pri- 
macy of Peter — " and still he is not called the universal 
Apostle, and the most holy man, John, our fellow-priest, 
endeavors to be called the universal bishop. I am 
compelled to exclaim and to say : O tempora I O 
■snores .'" 

He concludes his letter to the emperor thus* " In 
obedience to our master's orders I have written to our 
aforesaid fellow-priest kindly, and I have humbly ad- 
monished him to correct this desire of vain-glory. If 
he is pleased to listen to me, he will have a devoted 
brother. If he persist in his pride, I see what will 
■follow ; he will have Him his enemy of whom it is said : 



EXER CI SING PAPAL S UP RE MA CY. (yj 

God resisteth the proud, but giveth his grace to the 
humbled (James iv., 6.) In the same strain he writes 
(Epist. xxi.) to the empress, asking her to use her in- 
fluence to bring John to a sense of duty, and then 
turning to another matter that concerned him as head of 
the Church and Supreme Universal Pastor, exercising 
the power of the keys committed to Peter, he writes: 
" The bishop of the city of Saion, Maximus, has been 
consecrated without my knowledge, or consent, and 
thus has been done what was never done under pre- 
vious princes. Which as soon as I heard, I wrote to 
the prevaricator that he should not presume to cele- 
brate the solemnities of Mass, until I should learn that 
this was done by orders of our most serene Lords, and 
this I commanded him under pain of excommunica- 
tion." But we will find instances enough in Gregory's 
pontificate of this claim of authority, and compulsion of 
obedience, or in other words that Gregory, who obeyed 
the canons and was the model Bishop of the Christian 
Church of antiquity, claimed and exercised all the 
privileges and powers, all the authority and jurisdiction 
over all the Bishops of the Universal Church, which the 
Pope of to-day claims. To John himself, the Patriarch 
of Constantinople, St. Gregory writes : (Epist. xviii., 
L. 5.) "Your fraternity remembers how great was 
the peace and concord of churches when you were 
promoted to the sacerdotal dignity. But with what 
hardihood and strange swelling pride, have you sought to 
usurp to yourself a new title, from which the hearts of all 
your brethren might receive scandal." He then re- 
minds him how Pope Pelagius, his predecessor, had 
written to him and ordered the archdeacon not to 
hold communion with him until he laid aside his pre- 



6S -r. G/?£GOJ?y the great 

tensions, and that abominable name of Universal 
Bishop, so derogator}^ to the honor, not only of the 
Holy See, but of all bishops, and continues : *' Certainly 
Peter, the first of the Apostles, was a member of the 
Holy and Universal Church. Paul, Andrew, John, 
what else were they but heads of their respective peo- 
ple, and still they were all members under one head. 
To em.brace all in a brief speech, the saints before the 
law, the saints under the law, the saints under the dis- 
pensation of grace, all perfecting the body of the Lord, 
are constituted memibers of the Church and not one 
even wished to have himself called Universal. See and 
own, then, what an arrogance it is to ambition a name 
which none of the saints presumed to bear. Were not 
the bishops of this Apostolic See, to which, God so dis- 
posing, I have been raised, called as a title of honor, Uni- 
versal Bishops by the venerable council of Chalcedon? 
And nevertheless no one ever wished to have that title, 
no o,ne used that rash name, lest in taking to them- 
selves in that rank of Pontiffs a special or singular 
glory they might seem to deny the same to all their 
brethren." 

This same he repeats again and again in several of 
his epistles, showing how unseemly it was in the 
Patriarch of Constantinoole to arrograte to himself a 
title, which was conceded to the Rom.an Pontiffs, but 
which they never would use, and which, even when ex- 
acting obedience to their supreme authority, and ex- 
ercising, as in this very instance, the powers of a 
Supreme Pastor over the whole flock of Christ, they 
would not employ, but rather would in their humility 
be called "the servant of the servants of God," and 
addressed the bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs as 



EXERCISIlVG PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



69 



do the Popes of our own ddiy ^s brothers. St. Gregory 
then protested agpdnst the title of oecumenical or uni- 
versal Pope or patriarch, in the sense just explained, 
and called it blasphejgious in the mouth of the 
Byzantine Patriarch, who unrighteously arrogated to 
himself a name which the Roman Pontiffs were un- 
willing to accept even when offered by general councils. 
Many other beautiful and pointed things I might cite 
from these fervent and eloquent letters of the great 
Pope, and in particular, I may mention those written 
to his friend Eulogius, in which, as the historian Rohr- 
bacher tells us, the holy Pope sums up and teaches, 
" what are the principle, the model, the means and the 
end of the Catholic Church and its unity. Its princi- 
ple is one God and three persons ; the model of its unity, 
the vinion of the three divine persons in the same es- 
sence ; the mediator, who unites it to heaven, and in 
heaven to the one undivided Trinity, is Jesus Christ, 
giving to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; 
the means of this unity among men, is the union of 
the three Patriarchs and the other bishops with the 
same Peter, from whom their authority proceeds ; the 
final end, is the consummation of this unity in the 
three divine persons. The pretensions of the bishops 
of Constantinople were directly at variance with this 
divine ensemble. They grounded their claims, not on 
God, nor on Jesus Christ, nor on Peter, but on the 
residence of the emperors in their city. Therefore they 
would be called Utiiversal Bishop. And the Greeks 
argued later that this title of universal belongs not to 
the Roman Pontiff from the time the empire passed 
from Rome to Byzantium, which implies that the au- 
thority and hierarchy of the Church came not from Jesus 



70 



ST. GREGORY THE GREAT 



Christ but from C^sar. And thus this frivolous title, 
which appeared to Mauritius but an unmeaning word, 
concealed the whole system of Anti-christ, and its full 
significance the Pope alone .realized." As in the 
Eastern Church, so also in the West, was the authority 
of St. Gregory recognized. His untiring vigilance, and 
inflexible firmness and burning zeal for the integrity 
of the faith and the observance of ecclesiastical discip- 
line are seen in his numerous writings, but what we 
wanted to show was that St. Gregory the Great, who is 
acknowledged to be a true and model Bishop of Rome, 
living up to the canons of the ancient Christian Church, 
was as much a Pope by the universal jurisdiction which 
he claimed, and the supreme pastoral authority which 
he exercised over the Church and the bishops of his 
day as the Popes of our own times. 

This is seen abundantly in this affair regard- 
ing the title of (ecumenical or universal bishop, and 
the Patriarch, John the Faster, afterwards publicly ac- 
knowledged Gregory's authority and referred ecclesi- 
astical causes, even those regarding simple priests, to 
him for final and definitive judgment. A few more ex- 
amples of the exercise of suprem.e appellative ju- 
risdiction by St. Gregory may not be out of place. 
Honoratus, arch-deacon of Salon in Dalmatia, accused 
his bishop, Natalis, of unjust treatment, and appealed to 
St. Gregory to be reinstated in the office from which 
Natalis had deposed him. The saint wrote to Natalis 
to restore Honoratus, and if there still remained any 
subject of strife, " let the arch-deacon come hither, 
and send some competent person to plead your cause, 
that thus with the help of the Lord we may be able, 
without regard to persons, to decide in favor of jus- 



EXERCISING PAPAL SUPREMACY. /^ 

tice," (L. i., Epist. xix.) The bishop not heeding this 
command, Gregory wrote to him again in March, 592 : 
" Reinstate Honoratus immediately on the receipt of 
this our letter. If you defer longer, know that you are 
deprived of the use of the pallium, which has been 
granted you by this see. Should you continue in your 
obstinacy, you will be deprived of the participation irk 
the body and blood of our Lord, after which v\^e will, 
examine juridically whether you shall continue in the' 
episcopacy. As to the one whom you have ordainedi 
arch-deacon to the prejudice of Honoratus, we depose- 
him from that dignity, and if he continue to exercise its» 
functions, he will be deprived of Holy Communion."" 
(L. ii., Epist. xviii.) The bishop submitted, and after 
his death, which occurred shortly afterwards, Honora- 
tus, with the approval of the Pope, was elected by the 
clergy to the vacant see. The bishops, however, of the 
province did not concur in his election, and preferred 
another, called Maximus, whereupon the Pope wrote to. 
the bishops of Dalmatia, forbidding them by the autho-^ 
rity of St. Peter to consecrate a bishop of Salon with- 
out his consent, under pain of being deprived of the 
participation in the body and blood of the Lord, and 
of the nullity of the election. (L. iv., Epist. x.) It is 
of this Maximus that St. Gregory spoke in his letter 
to the empress. If we nov/ turn to Gaul, we will see 
his authority everywhere acknowledged. He made, as 
we have already remarked, Virgilius of Aries, his owa 
vicar, sending him the pallium, and giving him metro- 
political jurisdiction over other bishops. In England, 
to which he had sent St. Augustine, he regulated all 
the ecclesiastical affairs, gave authority to x\ugustine 
to consecrate other bishops, and expressly declares 



'J2 



ST. GREGORY THE GREAT 



that, " Besides the bishops ordained by yourself and 
the bishop of York, we wish also all the bishops of 
Britain to be subject to you." (L. xi., Epist. Ixv.) In 
a memorial replying to St.. Augustine, he even goes 
into details of Church government, and among other 
things allows St. Augustine, whilst the only English 
bishop, to consecrate without the assistance of other 
bishops, thus forestalling by centuries, objections of 
the violation of canonical rule made against some of 
our consecrations, and showing that a Bishop of Rome 
even as observant of the canons as St. Gregory is ac- 
knowledged to be, could dispense with canons of dis- 
eipline when there existed sufficient cause. 

Thus is St. Gregory shown to have acted the Pope 
m^uch more than poor Boniface III., his second suc- 
cessor, who is blamed for having initiated the usurpa- 
tions of the Papacy, though he only reigned from 
February 19th, 607, to November loth of the same year. 
The honor of beginning the Papacy within so brief a 
pontificate is doubtless accorded to him, because he is 
said to have obtained from the Emperor Phocas, who 
had succeeded Mauritius, an acknowledgment that 
the Apostolical See of St. Peter, that is, the Roman 
Church, was the first and chief of all the churches. 
Whether the emperor actually subscribed to such a 
document or not is of little consequence, as what we 
have seen of St. Gregory, how emphatically this claim 
was made, and positively enforced by him, shows the 
existence of a full-fledged Papacy before either Boni- 
face or Phocas. Not to become entirely too prolix, 
we beg to refer our readers to Dr. Hergenrother's, ad- 
mirable little work on the " Catholic Church and Chris- 
Lte," (vol, I. Essay 11, p. 93) for clear and con- 



EXERCISING PAPAL SUPREMACY. 73 

vincing testimony that not only was the Papacy in ex- 
istence, but that Papal infallibility was believed and 
taught in the first six centuries. I ought, perhaps, for 
such* as wish to verify my statements, say that I have 
quoted the epistles of St. Gregory from the Abbe 
Mignes Patrologics citrsus completus, torn, 77. Paris, 1 849. 



74 



XIL 

VICARS CF THE POFE. 



H E next gross misstatement of Catholic doctrine 
-L ^r: irg^ out of this controversy, which I feel 
rryse.: :i.-izz s^pon to correct, is that Catholic bishops 

are r; reiuced to the rank c: presbyters:'* that, 
"The r:. :ie.n theology of Rzrr.e has a'z:hshed 
the episcopal order, and maintains nothing bu: an 
episcopal office, which is held at the nod of the Pen- 
tiff by a class of men in the order of presbj^ers v.- ho 
are ir. ere vicsrs cf the ?:pe ::. theh several dioceses. 
biit h:.ve ::: z:--rtr i: i.'.'. =s true bish:;s,'" Th!5 sante 



actually insulthtg. and in proof of all this, references 
are eh.en to the Catechism of the C.ur.cilof Trent, 
an a St. Liguori's Theology; references ---':^z:., is ve 
shih uresenth' see, nr:ve nothing :: the kini. To 
rr:',e thit the .. : -^ ; P.:''->ian Ch:. : u^es not rccZuJc* 
::i U.J n/u :: :':: :f mere y.cir.iers ; that the 

modern tJieolog\ . /' .n. u has not abolished the episcopal 
ordtr. ana that as true bisliops, the bishops of the Catho- 
lic Churth have all the power both of order and juris- 
dicticn e.er possessed or exercised by bishops in the 
primitive Roman Church in its Catlwlic purity, we 



VICARS OF THE POPE. 75: 

acknowledge, and, if necessary, can demonstrate that in 
the first, second, third and fourth centuries of the 
Church, bishops were held to be a distinct order from 
mere presbyters, and by divine institution, superior to 
them in rank, dignity and power, and we will give a 
simple brief statement of the authoritative teaching of 
the Catholic Church of to-day from the Council of Trent 
and St. Liguori, the two authorities quoted against us. 
We beg, moreover, to refer any one wishing either to 
satisfy himself that this is in harmony with the mGder7z 
theology of Rome, or to see the question more fully 
discussed, to a compendium of dogmatic theology, a 
copy of which last year I had the honor of receiving 
from the hands of its venerable and learned author, 
H. Hurter, S.J., S.Th., et Ph.D. (tom. iii. CEniponte, 
1879), ^ professor in the University of Innsbruck, and 
a son, by the way, of the illustrious Hurter, who so 
nobly vindicated the character of Innocent III. '' If 
any one say that there is not, in the Catholic Church, 
a sacred hierarchy by divine ordinance instituted, which 
consists of bishops, priests and ministers, let him be 
anathema," says the Council of Trent. (Sess. 23, Can. 6.) 
As presbyters or priests outrank deacons, so bishops 
outrank presbyters, and that this sacred body of rulers 
in the Church, thus graduated, co-related and subordin- 
ated, is of divine institution, is the express teaching of 
modern Rome. 

Not mere presbyters, then, are bishops, but by divine 
institution they are distinct. But not only are they 
distinct from, but they are, by the teaching of the same 
council, superior to simple presbyters: "If any one 
say, that bishops are not superior to priests, or that 
they have not the power of confirming and ordaining,. 



^6 CA THOLIC BISHOPS NO T MERE 

or that that power is common to them and priests, 
let him be anathema." (Sess. 23, Can. 7.) How then 
can it be said that bishops are simple presbyters when 
the highest authority of the Church thus distinctly and 
explicitly states the contrary, and all modern theolo- 
gians teach with the Church that there are powers at- 
tached to the episcopal order which simple priests can- 
not exercise. The simple priest, through the sacred 
laver of regeneration, begets children to the Church, 
but only bishops can by the imposition of hands beget 
fathers and masters. That this power attaches to the 
episcopal order b}' divine right and not by any eccles- 
iastical law, may be shown from the fact that although 
incase of necessity laics may validly confer baptism, 
and priests by special delegation may be empowered 
to confirm, never has the Church held valid an ordina- 
tion of priest or bishop unless when administered by a 
validly consecrated bishop. And never has the Church 
attempted to withdraw' this power from the bishop. 
She simply declared such ordinations illicit and sac- 
religious, but still valid, even when performed by an 
excommunicated, deposed, or heretical bishop, from 
whom she has withdrawn all jurisdiction, and thereby 
disqualified him. from transm^itting lawful succession. 

Not only does the modern theology of Rome then 
establish the superiority of bishops over simple pres- 
byters but the Roman Pontifical, in the ordination 
service of the priest, plainly distinguishes between 
the high priests {pontifices stmtmos), placed over the 
Deople to rule them, and the men of a lower order 
:.r.d second dignity {sequentis ordinis z'iros, et secun- 
'.:2 dignitatis)^ chosen to co-operate with and aid the 
:::rher order, as the seventy prudent men aided Moses 



VICARS OF THE POPE. yy 

in the desert, and as our Lord associated with the 
Apostles other disciples and teachers of faith. The 
learned Hurter, in the work already mentioned (p. 428), 
lays down this thesis : ''The rite by which bishops are 
consecrated is a true order, distinct from the other orders 
and a true sacrament," in which he combats the teach- 
ing of the ancient scholastics that the episcopacy was 
only an extension of the priesthood, and maintains that 
it is now the common opinion, an'd the one by all 
means to be held, that the episcopate is an order dis- 
tinct not merely in grade or rank {gradu), but also in 
species {specie) from the priesthood. We may with 
the same author sum up the teaching of the Church 
regarding the hierarchy in these three points : (i) The 
hierarchy is divided into three degrees ; (2) The origin 
of this division is divine ; (3) As priests are superior to 
deacons, so bishops are superior to presbyters. This 
surely were more than sufificient to vindicate the 
teaching of modern Roman theology on the point in 
question, and to show how ungrounded and false the 
assertion that we had abolished the episcopal order, and 
reduced bishops to tJie rank of mere presbyters. 

We need then take no further notice of such glar- 
ingly false charges as these : "■ Popes had taught them 
that bishops were only presbyters, in order to magnify 
themselves as the only and universal bishops." *' Such 
was the common teaching of school divines before the 
Reformation :" " It is the Roman doctrine now. Yet 
as our good friend insists that these are dogmas of our 
own Church, established by infallible authority, and in 
proof hereof quotes in a foot-note " Liguori, who says 
some think the episcopate, probably, an order, tom. 
vi., p. 10," we beg our readers to bear with us a little 



78 CA THOLIC BISHOPS NO T MERE 

longer, while we show what St. Liguori really does say, 
for although v/e do not regard him as in any respect 
an " infallible authority," we respect him as a saint 
and doctor of the Church, and certainly of higher au- 
thority on points of Christian doctrine and Catholic 
theology than the man who pretending to give tome 
and very page misquotes and travesties his statements. 
Leaving some one else to hunt up and verify the re- 
ference, torn. vi. p. lo; in the edition (Mechliniai 
MDCCCXLV.) of the works of St. Liguori now before 
me, we find (torn.. 7, Lib. 6, Treat 5, de ordine, p. 220) 
as follows : " The episcopate is an order, by which 
special power is conferred of confirming the faithful, 
and ordaining ministers of the sacraments, and of con- 
secrating things appertaining to the divine worship." 
And in the same treatise : (p. 223) " It is asked — Is the 
episcopate an order distinct from the priesthood? St. 
Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and others deny, saying that 
it is an extension of the order of the priesthood. But 
more commonly theologians affirm that it is an order 
distinct from the priesthood, because in it a distinct 
-character is communicated, and a special power re- 
garding the Eucharist is given, namely, that of conse- 
crating ministers of this sacrament ; also, because the 
order of the episcopate is conferred by the laying on 
of hands and the form, receive ye the Holy Ghost, etc." 
To this let me add a short extract from a work by 
Rev. Aloysius Togni, entitled, '' Instructio pro Sacris 
Eccleside Ministris," which, we are told, is of the highest 
authority in Rome, being commonly used in the Roman 
seminaries. This we copy from note viii., in Appen- 
dix to '' The Anghcan Ministry," by Arthur W. Hutton, 
M. A. : 



VICARS Of THE POPE. 



79 



"What is the difference between a priest and a 
bishop? A bishop by divine right is superior to a 
priest, both in power of order and jurisdiction. In the 
power of order, for he administers the sacraments of 
Orders and Confirmation, in regard to which, the 
Council of Trent says, others of an inferior order, and 
therefore priests, (presbyters) "have no power:" in 
jurisdiction, also, because the bishop has proper and or- 
dinary jurisdiction through the whole diocese; but the 
priest has either only vicarious and delegated juris- 
diction or ordinary jurisdiction in a certain part of the 
diocese. Whence the bishop is the summit {apex) and 
complement of the priesthood (sacerdotii) holding the 
first place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy." 

Clearly then modern Roman theology has not abol- 
ished the episcopal order or confounded bishops with 
presbyters, and it only remains for me to remark, that 
those Catholic theologians, such as St. Thomas and St. 
Bonaventure, whose names stamp value and weight 
on whatever opinions they may defend, or whatever 
side of a controversy they espouse, in denying that 
the episcopate was an order distinct from the priest- 
hood, never dreamt of saying that bishops were 
simple presbyters or mere vicars of the Pope iii their 
several dioceses, as "Old Catholic" does. They taught 
that there were seven orders, four minor and three 
major or sacred orders; that the priesthood {sacer- 
dotium) was the highest order jn the Church ; that this 
sacerdotitim or priesthood was two-fold, embracing the 
presbyterate, or inferior priesthood, and the episco- 
pate, or superior priesthood, that sacerdotiiim was 
therefore a generic term, of which the episcopate was 
the extension, the plenitude and the crown; and that 



go VICARS OF THE POPE. 

though in rank the bishop was even by divine institu- 
tion distinct from and superior to the priest, yet the 
episcopate was not, properly speaking, a distinct order 
and sacrament. This differs, toto ccelo, from the mis- 
statments we are combating, and it shows how easily 
persons may be deceived, who take things at trust, or 
at second-hand, or who know of Catholic theology 
only what they glean from a superficial reading of 
some elementary hand-book of Christian doctrine. 



THE ANCIENT FATHERS VINDICATED. gj 



XIII. 

TEACHINGS OF ANCIENT FATHERS VINDICATED. 

WE can hardly excuse a man making pretensions 
to theological knowledge and patristic lore, 
quoting the ancient fathers and their writings, and yet 
putting forth garbled, falsified, and interpolated cita- 
tions, thus misleading simple, unsophisticated minds, 
to the prejudice of Catholic truth and the doctrines 
of the Catholic Church. With a theologian's knowl- 
edge of the question in dispute between Catholic 
doctors regarding the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and 
the decisions of the Council of Trent on the same sub- 
ject, no sincere seeker after truth could quote the 
catechism of the Council of Trent, Chapter vii.. Ques- 
tions xii., xxii., XXV., in proof of assertions which we 
have proved above to be so false and so contradictory 
to the decrees and canons of the council. Again, ''' St. 
Cyprian (A D. 250) on ' The Unity of the Church,* lays 
down certain maxims, which in his days were univers- 
ally accepted, thus." Here follow four propositions, 
all more or less garbled, and evidently intended to con- 
vey the idea that St. Cyprian, who occupied the See 
of Carthage from 248 to September 14th, 258, held 
principles and taught maxims in opposition to the 
primacy of the Holy See, yet perhaps not one of the 
early. Fathers more strenuously defends the preroga- 



§2 TEA CH2XGS OF THE 

tives of the chair of Peter, which he stvles the ridincr 
chair, or more frequently appeals to the authority of 
Peter's successors, as the centre and source of unitvin 
the Church. Certainly no one who ever read his ad- 
mirable treatise. " On the Unity of the Church," could 
have the face to mention either it or its author in 
assailing the claim of Papal supremacy, and universal 
jurisdiction of the See of Peter. We would ardently 
desire to have the whole treatise in a good English 
dress introduced to the English-speaking community. 
Xo better testimony could be adduced, that the maxims 
and principles of St. Cyprian, and universally accepted 
in his time, regarding the Papacy, are identical with 
those held by the Catholic Church to-day Pardon us 
then, dear readers, a short extract to supplement the 
mutilated excerpts of our " Old Catholic" controversial- 
ist. " The proof of faith is easy and compendious, 
because true. The Lord speaks to Peter : ' I say to 
thee,' He says, ' that thou art Peter, and on this rock 
I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it. And to thee I will give the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
on earth, shall be bound also in heaven ; and whatso- 
ever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed also in 
heaven." And as^ain he savs to him, after His resurrec- 
tion. ' Feed miy sheep.' Upon that one individual He 
builds His Church, and to him He commits His sheep to 
be fed. And although after the resurrection He gives 
to all His Apostles equal power, and says : ' As the 
Father hath sent me, I also send you ; Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost ; whose sins }-ou shall forgive, they shall 
be forgiven them ; whose sins you shall retain, they 
shall be retained:' vet. to manifest unitv. He di-'^osed 



A NCI EN T FA THER S VINDICA TED. 8 3 

by His authority the origin of the same unity, which 
begins from One. Even the other Apostles were cer- 
tainly what Peter was, being endowed with equal par- 
ticipation of honor and power, but the beginning pro- 
ceeds from unity, and the primacy is given to Peter, 
that the Church of Christ may be shown to be one, 
and the chair one^ 

In other places St. Cyprian calls the Church of 
Rome, the root and matrix of the Catholic Church, the 
ruling Church whence sacerdotal unity has arisen. So that, 
as the learned Dr. Kenrick, in his " Primacy of the 
Apostlic See," tells us, the violent opponent of the 
Pope's supremacy, Barrow, admits that, *' St. Cyprian 
considered St. Peter to have received from Christ a 
primacy of order," and Bishop Hopkins of Vermont 
was forced to sigh over the fact that so early did the 
Bishops of Rome endeavor to secure dominion and suprem- 
acy, and that it must be granted that in the year 220, the 
doctrine was partially admitted that the unity of the 
Church took its rise in the See or diocese of Peter, And 
Haliam (" Middle Ages," Chap, vii.) confirms this, say- 
ing: " Irenaeus rather vaguely, and Cyprian more 
positively, admit, or rather assert, the primacy of 
the Church of Rome, which the latter seems to 
have regarded as a kind of centre of Catholic unity." 
The appeal, then, to the early Fathers furnishes little 
comfort to the enemies of the Holy See, and a study of 
those early lights of the Christian Church must con- 
vince any earnest, candid inquirer that the Papacy, 
its powers and prerogatives, are of divine origin, and 
hence neither Tertullian, nor St. Vincent of Lerins, 
teach anything but what we teach to-day in the quota- 
tions urged against us. And I would here close tlr'^ 



84 



TEACHINGS OF THE 



reference to the Fathers did not our reviewer sum- 
mon the illustrious doctor of the Western Church, St. 
Jerome, to testify in behalf of " Old Catholicism." I 
cannot allow that great man, stern of feature and 
blunt of speech, whose classic latinity, and rigid asceti- 
cism made him worthy to be the secretary of the 
learned Pope Damasus, and spiritual guide of a 
Paula and Eustochium, whose biblical knowledge 
qualified him to undertake and faithfully execute the 
task of translating the Bible from the original text, to be 
put on record in the 19th century against the Papacy 
whose sturdy and fearless champion he was in the 
4th and 5th centuries. Thus, then, St. Jerome is made 
to speak : '' If one is looking for authority, the world 
is greater than one city. Wherever a bishop may be 
placed, whether at Rome or Eugubium ; whether at 
Constantinople or Rhegium ; whether at Alexandria 
or at Tunis, he has the same authority, the same 
worth, the same priesthood. The power of wealth, 
the lowliness of poverty, render a bishop neither 
higher nor lower. All are successors of the Apostles." 
Now, please to remark that the only words in this 
extract from the letter of St. Jerome having any sem- 
blance of force or point against Catholic doctrine are 
those " he has tJie same authority y' and these words St. 
Jerome never wrote ; they are a pure interpolation. 
Now, I do not charge that our Buffalo '' Old Catholic" 
committed this fraud, or falsified St. Jerome's letter ; he 
simply did here, what he has been doing all along; he 
has taken these things at sec9nd-hand, has accepted 
a falsified, interpolated version as the genuine text, 
without ever examining the original. I am the more 
inclined to put this construction on the matter, be- 



ANCIENT FATHERS VINDICATED. g^ 

cause I think if he had read this letter, to which he ac- 
curately refers in a foot-note as Epist. cxlvi., he would 
never have cited it as authority, for in this letter St. 
Jerome does what modern Roman theology is charged 
with doing, he reduces bishops to the level of priests, 
and says that -bishops and priests are all the same. We 
will let our Episcopal friend settle the matter with St. 
Jerome and Presbyterians, who often quote this very 
epistle of St. Jerome. For ourselves, we know what 
the Church teaches on this point, and we know that St. 
Jerome himself elsewhere acknowledges the superiority 
of bishops, and we know that this letter was written to 
correct an abuse, by which deacons pretended an 
equality with priests, and grounded their claims on 
certain Roman customs and privileges. 



g5 CAJVOiVS OF NICE AND EPHESUS. 



XIV. 

CANONS OF NICE AND EPHESUS. 

JUST here I may call attention to another very mis- 
leading statement, professedly inferred from the 
canons of the Councils of Nicea and Ephesus. In a 
lecture delivered in St. Joseph's Cathedral, 1874, I 
referred to the letter which Pope Julius I. wrote to the 
Eastern bishops, A. D. 342, sustaining the appeal made 
by St. Athanaslus, in proof that at this early period 
there was a Pope claiming and exercising jurisdiction 
over the v/hole Church, East and West, g.s fully and em- 
phatically as the Popes in our own times ; to which 
our " Old Catholic" reviewer replies : '' Had Julius 
add^'essed the bishops of Britain, A. D. 342, even in 
terms of patriarchal authority, they would have, re- 
minded him that his limit was Lower Italy." A few 
sentences before he averred that, '' Western Europe 
had but one such (Apostolic) See, and in the nature of 
things that gave Rome a canonical primacy;" and 
still a few lines above, he asserts that in the letter to 
which I referred, written to the bishops of the East, in 
answer to an appeal to the Pope : *' Julius was claim- 
ing his patriarchal primacy under the canons." So 
that although Julius' " patriarchal authority was 
limited to Lower Italy," '' Rome had a canonical prim- 
acy over Western Europe," and "a patriarchal author- 



Cy4.V0.VS OF NICE AND EPHESUS, g^ 

ity, under the canons" over i\lexandria and the East- 
ern Church. But it is not to these contradictions that 
I wish to call special attention, but to this following 
statement : "After Ephesus, they (the bishops of 
Britain) would have said, that England, with Cyprus 
and other islands, was canonically exempt from all 
such jurisdictions ; which was and is the fact." But 
even stranger than the statement itself is the bold at- 
tempt to sustain it by reference in a fooi-note to; 
" Canon vi., of Nicea, afterwards Canon vii., of 
Ephesus." 

Now, although we cannot be expected here to dis- 
cuss these canons, we af^rm positively and categorically, 
that these canons do not exempt England, Cyprus or 
any other islands from the jurisdiction of the Holy 
See, and that there was no question of such exemp- 
tion in either the Council of Nicea or Ephesus. The 
question before the Fathers of the Nicene Council was 
in regard to the jurisdiction of the See of Alexandria, 
honored and privileged from earliest days because it 
w^as the See of St. Mark the Evangelist and disciple of 
St. Peter. The Meletian schism gave rise to this con- 
troversy, for after Meletius was condemned by St. Peter 
of Alexandria, and deposed from his see, he rebelled 
against the authority of the Apostolic See of Alex- 
andria, and this it was that caused the synod to define 
the rights and jurisdiction of that see over the prov- 
inces of Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis, which it does in 
these Avords : " Let the ancient custom throughout 
Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis be strictly adhered to, so 
that the bishop of Alexandria shall have jurisdiction 
over all these ; since this is also the custom of the 
Bishop of Rome." Now, there has been some differ* 



88 CA iVO.VS OF NICE A ND EPHE S US. 

ence of opinion about this last clause, or about the 
true meaning and correct translation of the original 
Greek text, some, with Bellarmine, maintaining the true 
meaning of the canon to be: ''Let the bishop of 
Alexandria govern these provinces, because such was 
the custom of the Bishop of Rome ; that is, because 
the Roman Pontiff, prior to any definitions by councils, 
was used to permit the Alexandrian bishop to govern, 
or have jurisdiction, over these provinces," w^hich 
w^ould be a clear acknowledgment by the first general 
council of the primacy of Rome. Others say, with 
Phillips, that. " This canon does not demonstrate the 
primacy of the Pope, as the Council of Nicea did not 
speak of this primacy, simply because it had no need 
to be established or confirmed by it," and hence with 
Hefele, they translate the clause; ''There is a similar 
custom for the Roman Bishop," that is, jurisdiction over 
different provinces, a patriarchate is recognized in re- 
gard to Rome, and the same should hold for Alexandria. 
Now, we will not discuss this disputed point, though 
from the text the first is plainly the true meaning, but 
it is in any case undeniable that the Council of Nicea 
never dreamed of curtailing the jurisdiction of the 
Pope or exempting England, Cyprus, or other islands 
from his jurisdiction. So much then for Canon vi. of 
the Council of Nicea. What about Canon v'n. of 
Ephesus? In the first place, with most authors who 
have written the history of this council, we hold that 
that council formulated but six canons. " If in some 
codex!' says Hefele, (" History of the Councils," torn. II., 
p. 389, French Ed. 1869), " eight canons are found, it is 
because the resolution passed by the council on the 
the motion of Charisius, is regarded as Canon vii., and 



CAiYOiVS OF NICE AND EP HE SI'S. c -. 

the decree conce/ning the bishops of Egypt is put 
down as Canon viii." This decree, then, passed in the 
council at its seventh session, is referred to by our 
learned divine as Canon vii. of the Council of Ephesus. 
Those wishing to obtain full information regarding the 
nature and meaning of the decree of the council, I 
must refer to Hefele's History above cited, or to the au- 
thorities which he quotes, (ibid., pp. 386, 387.) Let me, 
however, briefly as possible, state the question pro- 
posed to, and acted on, by the council, in order to show 
that it has no connection at all with the jurisdiction or 
primacy of the Roman Pontiff, although, with an un- 
accountable assurance, evidencing either bad faith, or 
inexcusable reliance on second-hand, untrustworthy in- 
formation, we are told that : ''After Ephesus, England, 
with Cyprus and other islands, was canonically exempt 
from such jurisdiction." 

The Apostolic See of Antioch, which the Apostle 
St. Peter himself founded, like that of Alexandria, 
claimed special privileges and an extensive jurisdic- 
tion, which the sixth canon of the Council of Nicea 
seemed to recognize and confirm, in these terms: "In 
like manner, regarding Antioch and the other provinces, 
let the churches retain their special privileges." The 
bishop of Antioch claimed superior metropolitan or 
patriarchal rights over Cyprus, in particular the right 
of consecrating its bishops. As the metropolitan of 
Constantia died about the time of the convocation of 
the council, the proconsul of Antioch, at the suggestion 
of the Patriarch, forbade a new election to be held until 
this disturbing question of jurisdiction should be finally 
adjudicated. In defiance of the prohibition, Rheginus 
was elected to the see of Constantia, and with two of 



go 



cajVOns of nice and ephesus. 



his suffragans, Zeno and Evagrius, he appealed to the 
council against the pretensions of Antioch, and the 
question was warmly and lengthily discussed in the 
seventh session, and it was decreed, that: ''The 
churches of Cyprus should continue to enjoy their in- 
dependence and the right of consecrating their own 
bishops (and of electing them), and that the synod 
renew in general all the liberties of the ecclesiastical prov- 
inces, and forbid encroachments on foreign provinces." 
Thus a contest between local churches regarding ec- 
clesiastical privileges, and disciplinary canons regulat- 
ing the mutual relations of these churches, has been 
strangely twisted into a canonical exemption from the 
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, and it is more than 
insinuated that such, forsooth, was the purpose and 
scope of these canons. Such contests and rivalries 
and disputes regarding jurisdiction have been not un- 
frequent in the Church, since the Apostolic ages; such 
existed. between Canterbury and York In England, be- 
tween Aries and Vienne in Gaul, and such, in very 
possible contingencies, may yet exist between the 
metropolitan sees of Baltimore and New York. 

Voluminous are the canonical enactments adjudicat- 
ing such rival claims, deciding such controversies, 
and regulating and defending the limits and extent of 
diocesan, metropolitical, primatial and patriarchal jur- 
isdiction, yet what student of church history would 
assert that by such ecclesiastical legislation ablov/ was 
aimed at the supremacy of the Holy See, or the uni- 
versal jurisdiction of the Pope? It is even still more 
astonishing that any one denying the primacy of the 
Pope, or claiming independence of his supreme pastoral 
authority, should make any reference to the Council of 



CAKONS OF A' ICE AND EPHESUS. . gj 

Ephesus, held in the year 441, composed of two hun- 
dred bishops, mostly of the East. . Cyril, of Jerusalem, 
opened the first session, on the the 226. of June, and 
presided, as the acts of the council state, in the name 
of the Pope. It proceeded to condemn Nestorius, who 
refused to the Blessed Virgin the title of Theotokos or 
Mother of God. " Forced," says the council, '' by the 
canons and by the letter of our most holy Father, and 
co-laborer, Celestine, Bishop of Rome;" it vindicated 
the divine maternity of Mary, and originated the prayer 
so dear to Catholics, adding to the Angel's greeting the 
words: "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners^ 
now, and at the hour of our death." 

In the second session, held on the loth of July of the 
same year, Cyril is again expressly designated in the min- 
utes orpi'ods verbal oith.Q session, as the representative 
of the Bishop of Rome. In time to assist at this sesstcm 
came three legates of the Pope, Arcadius and Projec- 
tus, bishops, and Philip, a priest, bringing a dogmatical 
letter from Celestine, which was read before the synods 
first in the original Latin, and then in a Greek versioOj, 
which was received with loud applause. The letter of 
the Pope declares that : '' He sent three legates to assist 
at the deliberations of the synod, and to attend to tke 
execution of what the Pope had previously concluded - 
and he doubted not, but that the assembled bishops 
would be in accord with these his decisions." The third 
session was held the following day, the nth of Jul}^^ 
The legates of the Pope declared that they had read, 
in the interval, the acts of the first session, (at whicis 
they had not assisted) and had found the sentence 
against Nestorius entirely canonical and according ta 
the discipline of the Church, but that, according to the 



92 



CA^^o^'s OF NICE and ephesus. 



orders of the Pope, they should require the acts of the 
first session to be read in their presence, which was 
immediately done. (Hefele, toxn. ii., p. 379.) lliis, surely, 
does not look much like snubbing the Pope, or repudi- 
ating his jurisdiction. Does Ephesus limit the Pope's 
jurisdiction to Lower Italy ? What gives Celestine, 
Bishop of Rome, the right to preside by his represen- 
tatives at the General Council of Ephesu- and to im- 
pose his authorit}' and his doctrinal decisions on the 
assembled bishops ? Can it be his dignity as Patriarch 
of the West ? How came Rome to have a '' canonical 
primacy?" Where are the canons to be found conferring, 
formulating, or promulgating this primacy^ Is it not 
plain and undeniable that this primacy had its origin 
in a higher source, existed, and was acknowedged prior 
to councils and canons ? and that these, as Boniface I. 
writes to the bishops of Thessaly, " did not dare pass 
laws regarding the Bishops of Rome, knowing that no 
act of man could confer additional power on one, who 
had received all power from the words of our Lord 
Himself." With the history of the Council of Ephesus 
before us, its acts and its canons, how difficult it is to 
be patient on reading repeated assertions of this kind : 
*'By the ancient canons (A.D. 431) it was impossible 
for him fthe Pope) to assert even a /<^/r/^r^/^rt'/ author- 
ity, in England, which enjoyed the insular privi- 
lege of entire self-dependence," giving as authority 
" Third General Council, Ephesus," when there is 
nothing of the kind to be found in the Council of 
Ephesus, nothing more than what we have already 
mentioned, that the churches of the island of Cyprus 
are not subject to the see of Antioch.but should con- 
tinue to enjoy their independence in the election and 
consecration of their bishops. 



ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION, ^^ 



XV. 

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING ECCLESIASTI- 
CAL JURISDICTION. 

OUR Opponents seem to have no idea of the power 
of jurisdiction as distinct from the power of order 
conferred in priestly and episcopal ordination, and hence 
much of their confusion, bewilderment, and erroneous 
inferences. We have already said that the power of 
order may exist without the power of jurisdiction, as 
in the case of a priest regularly ordained by any lawfully 
consecrated bishop, but who has not yet received facul- 
ties or a mission from his own ordinary ; or in the case of 
a bishop consecrated merely to perform certain special 
acts, such as confirming, ordaining, etc., and these on 
this account are called in German, zveihbischofs, and 
they perform acts which none but bishops, none but 
those having the episcopal character and order can 
do. So, too, jurisdiction may be exercised without 
orders, as when a simple cleric is appointed to a bene- 
fice, or when a priest has received from the Pope his 
appointment to a see, but has not yet been consecrated. 
This premised, we say we hold, with St. Jerome, that a 
bishop in Buffalo is the equal of a bishop in Rome as 
far as his episcopal order, and the power attached to 
and inherent in his order, are concerned, for the episco- 
pate is one, the episcopal order is one and the same in 



94 



CA THOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING 



all bishops, wherever they may be placed, whether at 
Rome or Eugnbiuin ; at Buffalo, or New York, though 
there are various grades or degrees of jurisdiction, as 
is clearly explained in the Catechism of the Council of 
Trent, Chap. VII., Question xxv., to which reference 
has already been made. Take an illustration. Our 
present revered metropolitan, lately, to the joy of Catho- 
lic and non-Catholic America, made by our late loved 
and saintly Holy Father, first American cardinal, be- 
fore his promotion to the archbishopric of New York, 
was the bishop of Albany, and then he and the bishop 
of Buffalo were on a perfect equality, each governing 
bis respective diocese, and discharging the duties of 
his episcopal of^ce with the same powers both of order 
and jurisdiction. Elevated to the archiepiscopal dig- 
nity, and installed in the archiepiscopal see, and in- 
vested by the Sovereign Pontiff with the pallium, 
things are somewhat changed. His episcopal order 
lias undergone no change, no new character has been 
Impressed on him, no new consecration conferred, but 
besides the ordinary jurisdiction which he has now over 
the diocese of New York, as he had before over the 
diocese of Albany, and as the bishop of Buffalo has 
over his own diocese, he now has an enlarged or ex- 
tended jurisdiction according to the canons and laws 
of the Church over a whole Province, embracing seven 
dioceses. Another illustration. Our present illustrious 
Pontiff, Leo XIII., Vv-as consecrated bishop in Rome 
on the 19th of February, 1843, "^vith the title of arch- 
bishop of Damietta m partihis. 

He then received the full powers of the episcopal 
order, with only a nominal jurisdiction. He was sent 
as nuncio to Brussels, and for three years in the 



ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. 



95 



capital of Belgium, as bishop, was on a footing of 
equality with the bishops of that kingdom, though, 
except by special delegation, he could exercise in any 
of their dioceses no act of an Ordinary, no episcopal 
jurisdiction. His health somewhat impaired, he 
travelled, we are told, through Belgium and parts of 
Germany, visited England, and on his way back to 
Italy, passed through Paris, ' Lyons, Marseilles as a 
simple bishop, as the equal of the bishops whom he 
met, everywhere esteemed and admired for his learning, 
ability and virtue. We find him then a simple bishop 
again in Rome, and as such the bishop of Buffalo, had 
there been one at the time, would have been the equal 
of a bishop in Rome, nay, in some respect superior to 
him, for he would have jurisdiction as Ordinary over a 
diocese, and Bishop Pecci in Rome had not. But in 1846 
Monsigneur Pecci was appointed to the see of Perugia ; 
on the 26th of the same year the new bishop took sol- 
emn possession of his see, and without any new consecra- 
tion or any addition to the power of the episcopal order, 
by the appointment of the Sovereign Pontiff, he was in- 
vested with the additional power of jurisdiction as ordi- 
nary of the see of Perugia and metropolitan of the 
Province of Umbria. On the 20th of February, 1878, 
Monsigneur Pecci, who on December 19th, 1853, had 
been made cardinal, and on the 21st of September, 
1877, camerlengo, was elected, and on the 3d of 
March solemnly crowned Pope, under the name and 
title of Leo XIIL He is now, not a bishop in Rome, 
but the Bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter and 
vicar of Christ. Though there has been no addition 
to, or extension of his power as a bishop, or more 
properly of his episcopal order, yet, on his legitimate 



96 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING 

and canonical elevation to the See of Rome, the 
chair of Peter, he has acquired by divine right, by 
the institution of Christ and the Divine constitution 
of the Christian Church, supreme and universal juris- 
diction over the Church, is made Supreme Pastor 
of the \yhole flock, and thus, as among the Apostles, 
who were all equal, '' one was selected," as St. Jerome 
says, "" that by the appointment of a Head, the occasion 
of schism may be taken away," so among bishops, 
though there is a solidarity, " the episcopate is one 
and indivisible," according to St. Cyprian, and ''each 
bishop can hold a part without division of the 
whole," yet " Christ gave the keys to Peter as a token 
of unity," and for the preservation of that unity, He 
made the Roman Church, the chair of Peter, the 
radix and matrix of the Catholic Church, so that, 
though she "pours abroad her bountiful streams, yet 
there is one source, one Head, one Mother, abundant 
in the results of her fruitfulness." (St. Cyprian, De 
Unitate Ecclesiae.) 

Is not this just what we should expect in a Church 
founded by the Word and Wisdom of God, into which 
all were to be gathered that were to be saved and 
come to the knowledge of the truth, that thus, as He 
Himself declared, there might be " one sheep-fold 
under one shepherd." Thus then, with St. Jerome we 
agree that a bishop in Buffalo is, as to his episcopal 
order and the power of order, not only the equal of a 
bishop at Rome, but the equal pf a Bishop of Rome, 
and Pope Leo XUL, in this respect possesses no higher 
or greater power, is no more a bishop in the sense ex- 
plained than was simple Monsigneur Pecci after his 
consecration on the Viminal hill, in Rome, in the year 



ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. gy 

1843, though as to jurisdiction we now own him as 
Bishop of bishops, holding a primacy of honor and 
jurisdiction over the whole Church, and we hesitate not 
to repeat in regard to Leo XIII., what, when spoken 
in 1874 of Pius IX., of saintly memor^^, so much riled 
certain parties here: "As one man, we all, bishops, 
priests and people, lay at the feet of his Holiness all 
the devotion, love, reverence and submission due 
to the Supreme Head of the Church and vicar of 
Christ." This is probably more than enough to ex- 
plain the twofold power of order and jurisdiction, and 
our relations as bishops governing our respective dio- 
•ceses in communion with, and subordination to, the 
Holy See. Are Catholic bishops then simply vicars 
of the P(?/^, holding their office and their powers*^/ 
Ms 7iodf The episcopacy is of divine institution; it 
belongs to the organic constitution of the Church as 
founded by Christ. The titular bishop is the Ordinary 
of his diocese, governing it not by vicarious or delegated 
powers, but '^ placed there by the Holy Ghost, to rule 
the Church of God." (Acts xx. 28). His power both of 
order and jurisdiction over his flock, is from God, there- 
fore, he is styled Ordinary, exercises ordinary jurisdic- 
tion, which he delegates to others. Here we see the 
necessity of the distinction, which we have already 
brought out at some length, between the power of 
order and jurisdiction, and between the divine institu- 
tion of the episcopate and the appointment of individ- 
ual bishops. Bishops are successors of the Apostles, 
biit each individual bishop is not the successor of some 
one Apostle, as the Bishop of Rome is the successor of 
St, Peter. The mission of the Apostles was '^ to teach all 
siations," " to preach the gospel to every creature." No 



■^8 CA THOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING 

l)Ounds were assigned to them for the exercise of their 
jurisdiction ; the jurisdiction of a bishop is limited by 
the diocese to which he is appointed. 

The power of order in all bishops is, as we have 
seen, equal ; so is it essential, inamissible, indestructi- 
Me, In spite of Popes and councils, in spite of canon- 
ical prohibitions, excommunication, and even deposi- 
tion, a true bishop can validly perform all the acts 
proper to his episcopal order, because, not from the 
Church, not from the Pope, not from canons or coun- 
cils, but directly and immediately from God, is his 
power of order, and it is conferred by consecration. 
Kot so the power of jurisdiction ; it is conferred by 
Lis appointment, and before consecration is possessed 
in all its fulness and extent. It is not equal in all bishops, 
for then there could not be metropolitans, primates, 
patriarchs, any more than Popes, and yet these have ex- 
isted in the Christian Church from the earliest ages, and 
are interwoven into the texture of her constituent 
laws. Nothing is more clear in the history of the 
Church, and of the Church of England in particular, 
than that the jurisdiction of bishops has been modi 
Sed, changed, enlarged or curtailed by canonical en- 
actments and the actions of Popes. The history of the 
Pontificate of Gregory the Great, and the sees of 
Canterbury and York, affords ample proof of this, 
whilst it is superfluous to say that the Holy See has 
erected new sees, divided and subdivided dioceses and 
provinces, and even, though rarely, abolished sees. Wit- 
ness the Church of France after the French revolution, 
the establishment of the American Church, the re-es- 
tablishment of the English and Scotch hierarchy. The 
power of jurisdiction, then, in the episcopacy is divine 



ECCLESIASTICAL J URISDICTIOiX. 99 

and from God, but indirectly, and through the Pope, 
Christ our Lord so organizing and constituting His 
Church, giving to Peter the full power of the keys and 
the feeding and government of the whole flock, lambs 
and sheep. (Matt, xvi., 19. Johnxxi., 15, 16, 17.) " The 
episcopal power of jurisdiction is therefore not de- 
rived immediately from Christ, in so far as it exists in 
individuals; it has been established by Christ, but is 
not conferred immediately by Him upon individual 
bishops ; it is imparted to them by the Head of the 
Church, or bishops whom he has authorized. Thus the 
unity of the episcopate, so much insisted on by the 
Fathers, is fully upheld ; the Holy See is head, root, 
spring, origin of the spiritual authority." (Hergenrother, 
*' Church and State," vol. i., p. 177.) 

This is sufficient explanation of the formula used in 
the appointment of bishops, " In virtue of the power 
of God, of the Prince of the Apostles, and of the Rul- 
ing Pope ;" and also of that used by bishops themselves, 
** By the grace of God and of the Holy See," for even 
those who maintain with Thomassin that bishops obtain 
their jurisdiction immediately from Christ, acknowl- 
edge that: "They have not received immediately 
from him their particular territory or peculiar diocese, 
since this partition has been made in the course of 
ages by the Church, nor could it be made or perpetu- 
ated unless with the consent of the Head, in whom is 
the pivot and centre of the ecclesiastical unity." 
(Thomassin, cited by Hergenrother, as above.) IMore 
clearly and correctly does the learned Gerdile, quoted 
in the same place by the same author, express the 
Cath'ollc doctrine on this point, thus : " For jurisdic- 
tion, the assignment of a people as subjects is requisite, 



lOO ^^ THOLIC DOCTRIXE REGARDING 

and this is done by human, not divine right. Though 
the form and manner of this assignment may vary in 
different places and times according to the diversity 
of disciphne, yet none could be lawful unless approved 
by the Holy See, from whose consent it receives force 
and strength, according to the plenitude of power shed 
over the universal Church." That is, by the positive 
act of the Holy See assigning a diocese, and determin- 
ing its limits, the subjects of a bishop are determined 
and actual jurisdiction over the same is conferred, 
which jurisdiction is from God, though not immedi- 
ately, but through the vicar of Christ, it is ordinary, 
not delegated or vicarious, and hence he can delegate 
the same to others, which he could not do, were it a 
delegated power. And though the manner of making 
appointments to episcopal sees has varied at different 
times, no appointment could ever have been lawful, 
if the Holy See rejected it, or if the Sovereign 
Pontiff did not expressly or tacitly consent to it. 

This a Bishop of Rome who was faithful and exact 
in the observance of the canons, St. Gregory the 
Great, explicitly declares ; writing to the empress 
of Constantinople, he says in regard to the conse- 
cration of Maximus, elevated to the episcopate against 
his wish : " A thing was done which never happened 
under previous princes." (L. 5, Epist. xxi.) And to 
Maximus himself, he writes : " An unheard of wicked- 
ness is added, that after our interdict, excommunicating 
yourself and those ordaining you, you are said," etc. 
(L. 4, Epist. XX.) Rightly then do we " object to 
any ordination not proceeding under warrant from 
Rome." Nor does this " overthrow the orders of St. 
Chrysostom.. St. Augustine and St. Ambrose," as 



ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. jQf 

any student of history knows that these illustrious 
saints and doctors of the Church acknowledged the 
supremacy of the See of Rome and were in turn ac- 
knowleged by the Sovereign Pontiff. How false, then, 
and misleading the assertion, that because the Papacy 
is the source and centre of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 
in the Catholic sense now explained, Catholic bishops 
are "not true bishops, have no power at all." I 
almost deem it beneath me, especially after all we have 
already said, to notice the insulting remark : " They are 
not permitted to bear any corporate witness whatever ; 
and when summoned to meet the Pope in council, 
it is only to tremble around his throne, accept his 
oracles, and renounce their own convictions at his com- 
mand, or submit to be stripped of their dignities, such 
as they are." Catholic bishops are, by divine right, 
witnesses and judges of the faith, and they can neither 
abdicate their rights, nor be despoiled of them by any 
earthly power. 

It is precisely when assembled in council under the 
presidency of the Pope, that they represent, and are 
successors of the College of the Apostles, and in their 
corporate capacity speak with the full, supreme and in- 
fallible authority, vested by Christ our Lord in His 
holy Church. Are judges in our courts not true judges, 
void of all power and authority, because there are 
judges of higher courts to whom appeal may be taken, 
who have a wider jurisdiction, and who are empowered 
to review, confirm or reverse their decisions? Have 
bishops no power, because by our Lord's divine ordi- 
nances their power in the Church is subordinated to 
that of him whom He appointed as Supreme Judge in 
faith and morals, and Supreme Ruler and Pastor of his 



102 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING 

whole flock? Doesnot the Council of the Vatican clearly 
and emphatically state that its decrees do not curtail, 
weaken, or in any way belittle episcopal authority; 
that the universal and supreme jurisdiction of the Sov- 
ereign Pontiff does not conflict with that of the bishop 
in his own diocese? ^' But so far is this power of the 
Supreme Pontiff from being any prejudice to the ordi- 
nary and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by 
which bishops who have been sent by the Holy Ghost 
to succeed and hold the place of the Apostles, (Coun. 
of Trent, Sess. xxiii., chap. iv. ) feed and govern, each 
his own flock, as true pastors, that this their episco- 
pal authority is really asserted, strengthened and vin- 
dicated by the Supreme and Universal Pastor." (Dog- 
matic Constitution of the Church of Christ, chap, iii.) 

Thus, while thanking our friends for the great inter- 
est they take in the maintenance of our rights as 
bishops, as against the so-called overshadowing and 
all-absorbincr power of the Pope of Rome, we see how 
jealously the Church guards the original divine con- 
stitution given to her by her divine Founder. The 
Church is to-day as the Redeemer of the world consti- 
tuted and organized her, holding all her powers from 
Him, and wonderfully, divinely equipped to do His 
work, and to do His work unfailingly to the end of ages. 
To her keeping the fruits of redemption, the merits 
of the passion and death of a God-man, were to be 
committed, through her to be dispensed to the souls of 
men. She was to guard the deposit of faith, and teach 
it to all nations, and He Himself was to be with her all 
days, to the end of time, and the Holy Ghost was to 
abide with her forever to teach her all truth. Her 
ministers to-day can say with St. Paul, " Let a man so 



ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION, 

look- Upon us as ministers of Christ and stewards of 
the mysteries of God," (I Cor., iv. i.)and because sent 
by Him, delegated and empowered by Him, He says: 
*' He that hears you hears me." (Luke x. i6.) Bjit 
they have no arbitrary powers, they can exercise n© 
usurped authority, and nothing is plainer in Holy Writp 
than that our Lord chose his own ministers : *' I have 
chosen you, not you me ;" (John xv. i6.) and appointed 
them to do His own work, and '* I have appointed yxm. 
that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your 
fruit should remain." (ibid.) 

The Church is God's own work. He founded it, audi 
" other foundation no man can lay but that which is 
laid." (I Cor., iii. 2.) " Built upon the foundation of the 
Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the 
chief corner-stone." (Eph., ii. 20,) His own mystical, 
body, moulded into perfect shape and form by His own 
hands, living a divine life breathed into it on the day 
of Pentecost, it is destined to gather into one fold, un- 
der one shepherd, all mankind, for, as St. Cypriae 
teaches, there is " one God, one Christ, one Church.""'^ 
and St. Paul, " one Lord, one faith, one baptism," and 
does this not imply one Head, one Supreme Author- 
ity, one Universal Pastor? Can the smallest meeting 
be organized without a chairman ? Can any society ex- 
ist without a presiding officer? Can any city success- 
fully conduct its municipal affairs without a mayor? 
Would any rational man dream of a state without a 
governor, or a nation without a ruler? How long 
would our union hold together without a president, 
and does not the setting up of rival presidents involve 
the disintegration of the nation ? Could any of otir 
parishes or congregations ever remain one, united aiicl 



1 04 CA THOLIC DOC TRI.\ 'E RE GA RDEVG 

prosperous without a spiritual guide and pastor, hav- 
ing authority to teach and to govern ? How preserve in 
agreement of discipline and faith the priests and people 
of a diocese without a bishop invested with superior 
jurisdiction, recognized higher pastoral authority, and 
how maintain " one faith," " one Church," '' one fold," 
embracing all the world, all the bishops, all the priests, 
and all the faithful people of Christendom, without one 
Supreme Head, one sovereign authority, one divinely 
constituted, Universal and Infallible Pastor ? Did not 
our Lord provide for this in selecting one among all His 
Apostles, giving him the name of Peter, establishing 
him as the rock on which His Church was to be built, 
pledging His infallible word that the gates of hell should 
never prevail. against it, praying w^ith a prayer of divine 
ef^cacy that his faith fail not, for he was to confirm 
his brethren, and finally, actually giving him the full 
charge of feeding and governing his whole fiock, lambs 
and sheep, pastors and people ? The episcopate and the 
priesthood are necessary constituent elements in the 
Church, and can never be absorbed or abolished, but 
they are, by the very nature and constitution of the 
Church, subordinated to the Supreme Pastor, the Sov- 
ereign Pontiff. 

Nor does it follow, because a sovereign ruler, or ex- 
ecutive of a nation, may appoint, and, for cause, re- 
move inferior of^cers, or veto the acts of a co-ordinate 
branch of the government, that therefore he may abol- 
ish such of^ces, branches, cr departments of govern- 
ment, or usurp rights, privileges, and powers, equally 
valid with his own, and derived from the same source; 
even though by the law of the land, and the constitu- 
tion of the state, subordinate to his. In like manner 



ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. 105 

in the Church, by her divine constitution, a master-piece, 
by the way, of divine wisdom, there is, and it is of faith 
that there is, besides the Papacy, with its primacy of 
honor and jurisdiction over the Universal Church, a 
sacred hierarchy consisting of bishops, priests and minis- 
ters ; with rights, privileges and powers, as valid as those 
of the Papacy, reposing on the same foundation, se- 
cured by the same charter, a hierarchy therefore that 
never can be abolished by Papal power, absorbed or con- 
founded in the prerogatives of the Holy See, but without 
jangle or clashing of any kind, bishops, priests and 
ministers are ordained of Christ to co-exist and effect- 
ually co-operate even to the end of ages, with the 
supreme power with which He has been pleased to 
invest the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the 
Apostles and first Bishop of Rome. I must now finish 
what I have perhaps drawn out with perhaps un- 
necessary prolixity, but I was anxious to elucidate this 
point of Catholic faith, which has been so much obscured 
and misrepresented, in the hope that those large 
numbers of our esteemed and most worthy fellow-Chris- 
tians who admire the beauty, and strength, and indes- 
tructibility of what they call the Catholic system or 
Papal polity, may at length see that all this beauty, un- 
conquerable strength, and indestructible vitality are de- 
rived from her Divine Founder. Of them, or at least of 
many of them, whom we sincerely believe to be uncon- 
sciously and innocently, outside the true Church, our 
loving Saviour says : ^' Other sheep I have, that are not 
of this fold ; them also I must bring, and they shall hear 
my voice and there shall be one sheep-fold and one 
Shepherd." (John x. 16). Fiat I Fiat! 

THE END. 



82 



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